Deutschland 83

[unkated]

Has anyone else been watching Deutschland 83?

It is a TV series on the Sundance Channel, set in Germany (East and West) in 1983 during the time leading up to the large Reforger exercise, the shooting down of KAL flight 007, and the deployment of the Pershing II missiles. More data here:

Deutschland 83 on Wikipedia

The story revolves around an East German who agrees to spy on the West German Army (he is undercover as a 1st Lt, aide to a General) so his mother can receive be bumped up on the list to receive a kidney transplant and advanced medical care - bleeding new technology at the time.

The series is produced by a German company, so of course, most of the dialog is in German, shown with subtitles.

The main character finds that he likes living in the west (but keeps working to try to save his mother), that the West Germans are as afraid and disinterested in having to fight as the East Germans, but both sides feel pushed by Soviets (Andropov) and the US (Reagan) toward a war.

I find the show well done, and I find the period comfortable and familiar, aged as I am.

At one point, the main character delivers a computer disk containing the exercise plan to his East German handlers. There's this lovely scene with three East German security technicians staring at the disk and having to admit they have no way of reading it. Their Russian associate makes a phone call and say he can get them a PC in a couple days. In a later scene, they have the same look staring at an early IBM PC...

Anyway, dramatic TV series using the cold war as a backdrop are rare, so it caught my attention, and I thought i would bring it to yours...

Uncle Ted