Thursday, November 26, 2015

Germany - 83 Viewing

Last night, I sat and watched two episodes of the new German series on RTL (my commercial German network), entitled Germany - 83.  It's a short series....I think between eight and ten episodes.  I have to admit.....it's fairly interesting and they ought to go forward and do another dozen at least.

It's historically based in 1983.....in the heart of the Cold War period.  A East Germany (DDR) kid has been drafted by his government to go and replace a West German military officer and become a spy.  The kid is not that thrilled about the job and he half-way bumbles his way around.

At one point, he's entered a grocery store, and there are all these aisles and aisles of food.....fresh fruit from across the globe, and he's standing there in shock.  Back in DDR.....you had meager offerings and had to accept what they offered.  For the typical German watching the show today.....it's a big reminder about the difference in reality for east and west.

They built the segments into 50-minute pieces, with commercials.....so I'd take a guess each segment is about 40 minutes at best.

I would highly recommend it if you have a chance to watch it (Germany - 83).

1 comment:

LizanneFan said...

"At one point, he's entered a grocery store, and there are all these aisles and aisles of food.....fresh fruit from across the globe, and he's standing there in shock."

Back in the 90s, I worked with a Russian gal who had just come over. She brought gramma with her. The first time they visited a modern grocery store, gramma just stood there, having a fit. Concerned people came over, only to be told that the woman had never seen groceries in such quantity.

As a sidebar, when Khrushchev visited New York City, he was taken to one of the large grocery chains. He basically told his hosts that they weren't fooling him - he KNEW that they had cleaned out every store in the city and put it in one place to fool him.