S01.E01: TBA

[Meredith Quill]

Drama, MAX: Set during the height of the Cold War, the series covers a week in the life of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu’s right-hand man and closest advisor – who is also a secret agent for the KGB, and must escape Romania before his cover is blown. Helped by an undercover agents from both Stasi and the CIA, he must elude the KGB and his own country's spooks, fully aware that his defection is putting his family back home in mortal danger. Premieres May 19.

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TBA

 

[aghst]

This was more entertaining than I expected.  Cold War espionage intrigue set against a background of geopolitics.  

I guess the cast and production are largely Romanian.  Most Americans know little about Romania behind the Iron Curtain, other than that Nicolae and Elena Ceausecus ruled as despots and when the Eastern Bloc fell, the people turned on the couple.

Apparently though, the Romanians had some autonomy from the Soviets.  So in this world, the Soviets spied on Romanians though they’d work together to spy on the West and train Egyptians and other Middle Easterners to spy for them.

Victor Godenau is the right hand man of Nikolae Ceausescu and a close confidante of him and his wife.  But he’s also a spy for the Soviets and smuggling in Western goods.  Yet he’s a target for others in the regime, who want to take him down and curry favor with the Ceausecus themselves.

He knows they’re closing in on him and the Soviets offer to extract him to Moscow but he doesn’t want that, instead he wants to defect to the US.  Yet defections aren’t automatic, even though it would be a huge intelligence coup for the CIA.

They show a good amount of tradecraft and there’s a lot of suspense.  The character development isn’t Lecarré and some of the characters, you don’t get their motivations, like Ingrid, who has a privileged like in West Germany but turns out to be an agent for the Stasi.

They also inject action and suspense in the plot, which includes a terrorist plot and the American Embassy to get at Victor.  There are last minute rescues and escapes and some are incredible or implausible.  But overall pretty fast moving over 6 episodes.