Babylon Berlin, Seasons 1 and 2

Hmmmmm

This film, or actually German television series, was recommended to me by my son whom, like me, has the same taste in films and the same interest in history.  We'd started off watching Foyle's War last year and there was really nothing to replace it.  He watched Generation War, which I haven't, and then picked up this German television series set in the very late 1920s.  I wasn't too sure but I do like film noire type films and historical dramas, so I went and head and watched it. Indeed, while I wouldn't call it binge watching, I did watch the two series pretty much straight through.

I'm still not too sure. 

Indeed, I'm not going on to Season 3.

This television series is sort of a neo film noire detective series, as noted.  It's set in Berlin, at least in seasons 1 and 2, in 1929.  The main protagonist is a young German First World War veteran who is a detective from Cologne, sent to Berlin by his police official father, to investigate some unknown blackmail scandal.

In the course of investigating the hidden scandal, the detective encounters every single thing going on in a city that's steeped in vice and license, all while the Communists, Nazis and fifth columns from within and without seek to overthrow the government.  It's a lot.  It's too much in fact, although it is oddly compelling which is why I can say that I've watched both of the first two seasons.

It also stretches over the boundaries of decency in quite a few places as the vice investigated tends towards being sexual vice and there's a lot of gratuitous female nudity.  Indeed, at some point it edge up on being pornographic.  If it didn't quite get there, and that's questionable, it's because it was depicting the moral sewer that Weimar Germany had become.

Which is more than a little disturbing.  Almost nobody in the series is who they seem to be and all sense of decency has been lost or cripplingly impaired.  Even the characters you hope to like are pretty damages and often in a really icky way.  Of course, late 1920s Germany was cripplingly impaired and perhaps that's the point.  But if it is, you can almost grasp the logic of the people I used to hear when I was very young who smaintained that the moral sewer nature of Weimar Germany gave rise to the Nazis when average people got disgusted and wanted to clean things up.  That thesis is addressed in Nazi Germany; A New History and there's a little truth to it but its far too simplistic, and inaccurate, explanation of actually occurred.

In terms of historical details, this drama isn't a pure history and so it leans, rather purely relies, upon the history of the age.  On major themes they are set generally correctly if not necessarily purely portraying actual events.  Material details are well done.  Fairly wide liberties are taken with cultural details.

The series fails, in my view, for really stretching the bounds of credibility with its plots.  The concluding episode lacks credibility.  As a drama, it relies entirely too much on the female nudity of its female characters and really takes enormous liberties to explain it.  I'd give this one a pass and will do so on future episodes.