Shadowplay

The technical facets to this are excellent. The whole look and design is really full of dust and rubble and a vanquished nation. The actors too show their skill and across the various nationalities all hit their marks.

Where the series falters, and often, is the story and plot. The plot is the mechanism and the story is the overall narrative. It has everything thrown into it from fraternal love, psychological cracks, art theft, Cold War espionage,a bizarre female resistance etc . It is so cluttered as to be a mish-mash of of high drama and incredible, story telling.

It may succeed with some audiences but it seems a little desperate, as if they are not quite sure of what they have and have conceived all manner of subplots to keep this thing spinning so you don't notice that it's, well, a bit nonsensical.

In a way its like the dime novels that had a thrill every few pages to keep the reader hooked but when they finished the book they couldn't remember anything.

This was a decent miniseries, and I won't bother to discuss it in terms of acting, writing, etc.

It paid great attention to the post-war time in which it's set, 1946, except for the one glaring detail that drives me crazy in SO many productions that have been made in the 21st century. Stubble beards were NOT a thing then, especially for American police officers. Why, oh why, don't directors insist that their actors be clean shaven to fit in with the time period of their movies? Why does one actor's vanity trump the desire for authenticity?

Clearly there are a lot of bots on here - so many of the negative reviews either didn't watch beyond the first episode or take issue with the portrayal of the Russian or some other stupid thing that is ultimately unrelated to the show.

This show is fascinating that, while largely in English, Germans speak to one another in German, Russians in Russian etc - for people that aren't fond of foreign language films or subtitles it can take some getting used to, but it is very immersive and a cool take.

The pilot/first episode was slow to me and the weakest of the episodes and ultimately I think the scripts could have been better overall - but I found that as the series progressed I became more and more engaged with the storyline and what was going to happen/what would happen.

To me, each episode is better than the last.

Mala Emde (whom you might recognize from 2019's Charité at War or the 2015 Anne Frank movie "Meine Tochter") is a stand out. Great actress - hope to see more of her in English language films.

Logan Marshall-Green has a great performance - I won't spoil his role here.

Nina Hoss is another standout.

Solid performances by Taylor Kitsch (something about his accent just took me out of the scenes at times - maybes because it is so different than his "normal" accent) Michael C. Hall also had a solid performance but nothing compared to what he brought in those early season of Dexter and at times he comes across as more of a caricature of a guy from 1946 with his accent and appearance.

Really happy to hear that production has already begun on the second half of this limited-series.

Interesting to see where this will lead us.

I don't get the negative reviews here, yes it's far from perfect, but to say it's about white American saviours is a joke considering it's written by Germans. The show paints a good picture of immediate post war Berlin and the premise kept me glued right through the end.

This show is far from "woke" and it's characters for the most part are well written. I'd much rather see more historical shows with the occasional gaffe than the modern trash we have set in the present day.

It's also nice do have a mix of different languages, so do make sure you have subtitles since about 50% of it isn't in English.

This is not bad, and no where a propaganda show. Not no where near the others we see today. ilya is obviously upset that Russian's are portrayed for the brutality that they displayed after the war. This is just truth, many of us saw this, even way after the war was over, me personally in West Berlin.

And let us be clear, "They" did not willingly share anything. History, is always told in the perspective of the winners and of whom is telling it. To see the real truth you have to lived it yourself or experienced some of it yourself.

I did. So far this has been decent show and worth the watch. You will need subtitles for it.