Deutschland 86 – Second Season out

Deutschland 86 is the second unreleased season of Deutschland 83. The eight-episode first season, starring Jonas Nay, was unusually successful, as it was largely ignored in Germany, but was very popular abroad. This led to the second and third seasons of the series. The series follows Nay, who plays a young East German spy who is sent to West Berlin to uncover secrets, integrate and experience a pretty wild ride. The second season will premiere in mid-2018 and there is no official trailer yet, but those who want to find out can watch the Deutschland 83 trailer.

The first season, Deutschland 83, was rightly hailed as a pioneer of serialized storytelling in Germany in 2015. U.S. screenwriter Anna Winger broke up the classically correct German historical drama and infused it with glamour, emotion and action in the style of The Americans. Deutschland 83 had drive while staying very close to its characters, the young border guard Martin (Jonas Nay) and his secret service aunt (Maria Schrader), who takes him to the West as a spy.

For this, the Ufa production received the 2016 German Television Award for Best Series and the Grimme Prize. But its reception abroad was much more unusual: Even before the German TV launch, Deutschland 83 was bought by the American channel Sundance TV and broadcast as an original with subtitles. For RTL, however, the series was not a success, but neither was it the ratings killer that it was often subsequently accused of being – on average, each episode had around two million viewers. Newsletter

Perhaps Deutschland 83 simply came onto the German market a year or two too early. That has changed since last year at the latest: Bad Banks, 4 Blocks and Babylon Berlin were celebrated as new series hopes, and with You Are Wanted and Dark, the big streaming services Amazon and Netflix also invested in the German market for the first time. Germany 86 is also largely financed by Amazon, and RTL now still holds the first broadcast rights on so-called free TV. A development celebrated by the producing Ufa and many of the contributors.

Inconsistent direction, insane mix of styles

The sequel now comes along correspondingly broad-legged and brimming with self-confidence. The first two episodes overflow with opulent landscape shots, guns blazing, sex and explosions. Agent Martin, deported to Angola after his last assignment, is brought back by Aunt Lenora. Someone has to do the dirty work. This time, it consists of selling weapons to the South African apartheid regime, because the GDR urgently needs foreign currency. Apparently, showrunners Anna and Jörg Winger don’t trust their protagonists to explain the complicated political interactions through dialogue and action. That has to be done by a comic-like interlude – “What’s actually going on in South Africa and the rest of the world” – Sendung mit der Maus for series viewers.

In principle, this wouldn’t be objectionable if the comic-like element were established as a stylistic element, as it was recently in the great Amazon production Dietland. In Germany 86, however, it’s just a cinematic element that’s thrown into the room at times. Like the wild shootout in the third episode, in which dollar bills, machine gun bullets and human bodies fly through an Angolan warehouse in slow motion and the image then freezes into a still life of confetti, corpses and blood. While aesthetically effective, this is also completely unmotivated. Why exactly at this point in the plot, and what substantive twist is this meant to illustrate?

In short, you get the feeling that a few kids were allowed to let off steam and threw everything onto the screen that they always liked and wanted to imitate. Stupidly, none of the adults felt like sorting and cleaning up the whole thing afterwards

You can tell from these first sequels to new German series that they were produced under great pressure. The time for celebrating is over, now they have to deliver, and quickly. The second season of 4 Blocks was shot from January to May 2018, and the premiere was already in early October. Germany 86 was also made within just one year. This is illustrated not only by the insane mix of styles, but also by the inconsistent direction and acting by Arne Feldhusen(Stromberg, Der Tatortreiniger) and Florian Cossen(Das Lied in mir).