Anyone watching Deutschland 83?

[Destinysdaughter]

Am enjoying it so far. Very intriguing
premise and beautifully shot. I don't mind subtitles, find they make me concentrate more and am very interested in this period of history. Looking forward to see how it develops...anyone else? ( guess most of you are watching War and Peace tonight!)

That's a great read, thanks Austengirl

Thanks for that austengirl - really interesting. I lived in Germany in 1993 so 3 years after reunification and spent some time in Potsdam although I lived in Baden-Wuerttemberg. I remember getting the bus in the wrong direction once and ended up out in the rural wilds of the former GDR - it looked very like where Martin's mum lives - extremely shabby buildings in pretty countryside. There had been massive investment in the centre of Potsdam to showcase how the East would be rebuilt but as soon as you got out of the centre it was incredibly rundown and fairly bleak. The thing that always struck me was all the bullet holes in the buildings still from the war - in the West everything was fixed and buildings were either old and repaired (replastered, repainted) or demolished and new, sometimes rebuilt in the same style as what had been bombed.

There were still a lot of Trabis around in those days as well. Loads of the students drove around in them. My biggest horror was the showers at Potsdam University students residences - they were utterly grim and exactly like you'd imagine something from communist Eastern Europe to be - a huge freezing cold room (I was there in the middle of winter!) with old chipped tiles everywhere and a water pipe suspended from the ceiling with copper shower heads hanging down - crap water pressure, extremely variable temperature, now shower curtains and unisex!

RockandRoll, thanks for the insight and thanks Austengirl for the link.

I've just watched the last episode again

I'm so glad I stuck with it. Martin/Moritz is ace. Although some of his expressions remind me of father dougal.

Thanks, Austengirl and RockNRoll for the background info.

I've been thinking that the secret room has far too many books in it to have been procured by one person, or for one person's sole use. And I think whatever is going on, Thomas is in on it. So the most obvious thing would be for Ingrid and Thomas to be working together in some kind of secret cell, and they've aroused suspicion and are under investigation by the Stasi (hence the invitation for Annett to move in). Or maybe Thomas is a Stasi plant investigating Ingrid - or indeed vice versa!

Anyone still watching? I'm loving it more and more.

Finding a lot of holes in the plot though. How did they know Linda was in the woods in the first place?

Oh dear poor Linda. Was she actually up to anything dodgy? I've got confused.

I'm loving it too.

Linda was great, very feisty in the end!

Ooh it's got much more interesting tonight!

I wasn't expecting the suicide near the end!

That airbus 320 shown didnt enter service until 1988 says dh.
After dd spotted a continuity error in dates while watching Marvel Agents of Shield earlier this evening I feel I share my house with some rather tragic people.

oh blimey that was bleak

is he going to have to 'take care' of Yvonne as well since she saw him with Linda??

No, Linda wasn't up to anything dodgy, she realised that Martin must be lying and that was why she ran.
I agree, it was great to see her showing some spirit in the end after coming across as quite ditzy during the last episode.
So glad Martin didn't let her drown!
Rock your earlier post made me laugh, I also can't stop reading the subtitles! I have started to knit during the episodes to force my eyes off the screen.

It takes quite a lot to concentrate on the subtitles but am enjoying the chance to revise my very rusty German!

Goodness, tonight was action packed!

Yes, I liked Linda's character and that she wasn't as easily duped as they thought.

I didn't see the suicide coming either.

One downer is that I'm not finding General Edel's children that interesting at the moment, but we shall see.

Controversial opinion here, but I'd say this is less plot hole ridden then Bridge series 3, which was nonsense.

I'm bilingual too and I can't stop reading the subtitles either. I deliberately left my specs off so that it wouldn't be easy to read them and that just left me straining.

I think this is the best thing on tv for a long time. I lived in Germany on and off in the eighties (though I was only 8 in 83!) and it's really bought home how close we all were to oblivion.

I like reading and listening, it's fun to compare their translation with how I would have done it.

Blimey! Bleak tonight.

As an aside, I love the Edels' bright green velvet sofas.

Poor Frau Edel , mind - what a crappy birthday.

That was a grim in parts episode tonight. Alex's argument with Edel was fantastic. There's nothing like hearing someone losing their temper in German.

There seems to be a lot of women whose lives hang by a precarious thread. Annett, Martin's mum, Yvonne and her aunt. However, Alex certainly is playing with fire, I wouldn't trust Tobias at all!

Poor Linda, the swimming scene was almost unbearable to watch and her death a real shocker, followed by Mayer.

As an aside, Jonas Nay, who plays Martin, is a musician as well as an actor. Those green sofas were a hit for me too!

In case anyone's interested in the commune the daughter is living in, it's this. Looked for ages for a link in English and this is the best one I could find. It was an Osho centre in Cologne and is still going!

www.oshonews.com/2011/05/cologne-osho-uta-30-years/

interesting that both the general's children are traitors

jumps up and down with glee at finding this thread

Loving this series and cannot get enough of it at the moment - anyone else find last night quite emotional tough going? Poor, poor Linda - and Moritz too, they seemed to genuinely dig each other but it was obvious her time was up when he found the coded message in the woods. And Mayer! Jeez.

Can someone please clarify for me the relationship between Thomas and Ingrid (and Annett)? I know he and Annett were at it (so is her baby his?) but what is the relationship with the mum? Are they "partners in crime" collecting illegal literature together? It's really gone over my head.

Also - Moritz moved on pretty swift, no? Is that meant to show us that he's "hardened" - bump off one tactical girlfriend once her use has run out and move onto the next "useful" one?

PS: 10/10 to the poster upthread that said Moritz had "something of the Father Dougal about him" [grins]

Oh, was Mayer's death suicide? I didn't pick that up - I thought it was murder, but I couldn't work out whether it was by the East (having tried unsuccessfully to blackmail him into working for them) or the West (who thought he was a spy). I think Yvonne is next to go, that's why Martin was at the commune at the end. I had no idea the commune was real - thanks for the link, Destinysdaughter.

I'm not sure about Thomas and Ingrid. They're definitely up to something in that cellar, but I can't help wondering whether one of them is a Stasi plant investigating the other.

BIG SPOILER IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN LAST NIGHTS EP

mornington Moritz's aunt confronted Mayer with the pics of him doing the horizontal tango with Linda in an attempt to blackmail him to join her side. He then promptly goes into his office, looks at a picture of his little daughter, reached into the drawer and then BANG, you see him shoot himself in the head. So definitely suicide.

I think Moritz/Martin sees the General's daughter as a way if taking his mind off Linda and his double life, she's just a distraction. However, I wonder if she'll see it as more than that.