Der gleiche Himmel

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.

I just watched the series on netflix (until episode 4) and I am really hooked by the series. Essentially the main story is how much the former German Democratic Republic (communist East Germany) invested time, resources and talent to keep their crumbling regime alive. In order to silence any opposition, they employ this network of informants, whose main job is to accuse someone of being a subversive (even jokes about their leader was a crime), and they would arrest and probably torture any person caught trying to emigrate.

Despite so much oppression, life goes on, and we can see the contradictions of a communist life, where everyone is supposed to be from the same class, but families are ambitious, materialistic and competitive just like their compatriots in capitalist West Germany. There is a mother who's watching her daughter's life being ruined by the regime (they are giving her hormones and steroids to enhance her swimming performance), but she hopes that that sacrifice will Be worth if they get a larger apartment as a reward for her daughter success in sports.

My main criticism is that we have a few American and British characters, but they don't behave like either American or British and they speak German with their own children (normally you speak at home your mother tongue), besides anglos are notorious for being monolingual. Their flawless German is just not plausible.

The secret police from East Germany creates this ruthless program of strategic seduction, where agents infiltrate West Germany, and have manipulated affairs with American and British women who work for the military, and they discard them once they get all "intelligence" necessary. Watching that series makes you see how much communism relied on destroying people's lives in order to keep the system alive, but we don't see anybody happy in that country, nobody can have a normal life, and every neighbor and coworker might report you to the secret police, where you would be tortured despite being innocent.

It is very educational, I recommend the series.

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.

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.

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.