El mismo cielo

This decade, Germany has produced dozens of good films and series about life and habits during Cold War around FRG/GDR/West-Berlin, with versatile and intertwined plots, good character actors and apt understanding of environment and way of life. Der gleiche Himmel is another good brick in this wall, where focus is not entirely on one family, enabling to provide a broader picture of repressve, yet tragicomic life in socialist parts of Germany. The events seem realistic, perhaps the last episode rounded them up a bit hastily and "by halves" - apparently according to the filmmakers´vision. As mentioned, the cast is good as well, but here, I would like to spotlight the Swedish actress Sofia Helin as Lauren; for comparison, just watch here in "The Bridge" (Scandinavian version) and you will find out how talented and varied she is! Recommended to all those interested in German lifestyle prior to unification.

Living in the states as a German immigrant I am always excited to find intriguing mini series like "Generation War" on platforms like Netflix. This one started of extremely promising with wonderful cinematography, great costumes, interesting characters and great acting performances. Needless to say that Tom Schilling's talent adds to any production. When I watched the last episode everything began to shatter for me. None of the character's story lines were finished, no conclusions given. If this was a continuing TV Show I could deal with this a whole lot better but so far a second season has not been confirmed. The ratings on German television were rather mediocre so I doubt we will get the answers the viewers and the show deserved.

It helps if one lived in the time when this takes place as that would confirm what you understood was the case, but if not it accurately shows the tense, edgy and somewhat disconcerting feel of the time - when spying was not linked simply to some international government secret but an undercover operation when certain hired people spied on family, friends, coworkers and reported them in such a way as to make them enemies of the state. in that sense it's scary because it lives on in radical political environments even today. the 'Romeo' is not what one might expect in that he doesn't seem to fit into that category, but he does well with the role. one has to remind oneself that he is the enemy preying on unsuspecting victims in the name of the state. the production itself is not necessarily the best I've seen. it has a sort of cheap feel to it, BUT it seems to work anyway. it was good enough as an entertainment that if there is a follow up season, i definitely want to see what happens.

Excellent reconstruction of 1970s Berlin. They must have had an immense budget for vintage cars.

Only three weaknesses:

First, the American / English characters. There are several of these. Unfortunately, they are German actors putting on very poor American accents - which is distracting and often completely incomprehensible (there are no subtitles to help). Sadly, when you can understand what these characters are saying, you realise that the English dialogue has been scripted by someone whose level of English high-school exchange at best.

Second, it is not labelled "season one". That may gives the impression that this is a complete show - but when you get to the end of the last episode, it becomes clear that this was intended to be only the first season of several. But it didn't get renewed. So don't expect any closure at all, on any of the stories.

This is a great show with wonderful characters and story arcs. However...it was left unresolved with apparently no plans for a season two. Disappointing.