Berlin Station: Season One

It will keep you on the edge of your seat. Outstanding cast and Richard Armitage is amazing.

Not a bad suspenseful spy show. It bounces around sometimes losing focus on the point. Overall the acting is good and it’s worth the time invested. Not sure if I’ll get the second series.

Could be 5 stars depending on how it develops. I just finished Episode 1,and it was fast and engrossing. The only negative about it is that we don't know anything about any of the characters. So far, there is no character development and the story is a little like reading a list of instances. Acting is top shelf.The plot is the CIA as the good guys and a whistle blower (similar to Assange or Snowdon) as the bad guys. In a few words, the CIA is "stopping terrorism" whereas the whistle blowers, although uncovering illegal acts committed by the CIA, is hindering the CIA's anti terrorist activity. However, given the depth I'm already seeing, I'm betting it is going to get a lot more complicated than that. What I see coming is an in depth look at moral dilemma. That's always a interesting drama when created correctly.Update:Opps, by Episode 5, it's starting to look like a who's sleeping with whom where everyone smokes cigarettes. In other words, a soap opera rolled into a cigarette commercial. Lost a start with me. This episode was split about 50/50 with soap opera antics and spy vs spy. It was rather clever of marketers to incrementally add smoking scenes until every main character now smokes, and virtually every scene is a cigarette commercial, where the camera zoom in and focuses on the cigarette. That's not acceptable to me.Also, the plot is starting to have holes in it. Thomas Shaw is an inside man, and the CIA is good at finding leaks. However, in this series they seem to have no clue. In all of the decades the CIA has been operating, there have been very little leaks, and when there are leaks, people like Assange or Snowdon are quickly caught, or admit it willingly. That's because there are only so many was to get that information, since it is classified, and a logical investigation eventual turns up the interested party.It's too bad this is going the way of a smoking soap opera. It started off as a series spy series, and is slowly degrading into the cheesy soap opera. It's not even a good soap opera becasue the focus is being split by what started as a spy series, and is now sharing time as a soap opera.

Entertainment

“Berlin Station” is an engrossing drama depicting the present-day story of the goings on at the CIA station in Berlin, Germany. Young field agent turned analyst (after a rough assignment) Daniel Miller (Richard Armitage) suddenly comes back to the field after years on the bench and is posted to Berlin. He has a former colleague there, Hector DeJean (Rhys Ifans) with whom he shares a complicated history. Miller’s unspoken mission is to discover the identity of a leaker who under the nom de guerre ‘Thomas Shaw’ has been releasing damaging information about CIA op’s to the German press. There is no end to the intrigue, plotting, and scheming going on in “Berlin Station”; every principle character has some kind of baggage or hidden agenda and no one is truly what they seem on the surface. Who does Daniel trust? The audience is kept guessing right along with him and the tension ratchets up with each episode. Smoke and mirrors, lies and deceit are all SOP at Berlin Station which makes for a compelling series worth watching. My only negative is that I hated the theme song “I’m Afraid of Americans” and had to fast forward through it each episode. No matter, I’m ready for Season 2 to come out on DVD.

For all this early 21st century format spy series lacks in plot it makes up in the Berlin backdrop. It's more a video game than an actual espionage story. Lots of fun to watch. Make up your own story as it goes along. At the end they provide a provocative voice-over that explains everything and offers a moral, for all of us that made it that far.That far through sluggish, ambling episodes and generally a lot of over-the-top acting and gratuitous heterosexual sex scenes that do nothing to advance a plot. And without a plot, what's the point of an espionage drama?My name is Thomas Shaw. I stand for something. If I had better writers, you'd know what.Just took a look at first episode of season two and it looks like they're headed into more mindf**k territory. That might be good.

The cast is incredibly strong...so strong I got over first rate English actors with bad American accents at some point in the first season. If you like intelligent plotting, you will like this show. I loved the fact that even the minor characters were so richly rendered and intriguing--like Kolya in season 3, the Russian spy with the weird cowboy outfits. The show gets better and better. Seems like it ended prematurely. It took me awhile to get around to watching this because of some of the grumbling reviews, but I am so glad I took at chance on it.

I bought Season 1 and Season 2 because my cable subscriber does not offer Epix without taking an arm and a leg for a 100 more channels I won't watch, but I digress. Berlin Station was a different sort of intrigue for me. It had an edginess that I like but I wasn't keen on the "one of our own" is the bad guy which is just smacks of PC Hollywood, especially when this is filmed in Germany and with the current refugee issue Europe is are dealing with so much else could have been written. Some of the characters - Miller, Kirsh, and Edwards - were believable. DeJean not so much. Someone that far off the rails would have had some serious red flags and probably would have been shipped home. His character is much better in Season 2 but there are issues there which is for another review. All-in-all I liked the show and it's worth of binge watching, if you can get past the PC writing.

I had every intention of writing my own review of the excellent Berlin Station but there's little I would wish to add to the reviews already posted by Cora and Robert Stirling. I will therefore just confirm the following for those interestedAudio : English / French / German and Spanish.Subtitles : English for the Hearing Impaired / Danish / Dutch / Finnish / French / German / Norwegian / Spanish and Swedish.There are no Extras.

A powerful, dark & gritty series all filmed on location in Berlin. There are many surprises along the way, not all predictable, but when they happen - they happen, big time. This is only Series One, so Series Two has to be more gritty,& looking at the locations, there has to be more scenes scanning the underbelly of Berlin. The cast is a cross section of modern day Berlin, okay, the CIA cum FBI cum British Intelligence are the main ingredients, all wanting to outdo each other, cover up a cover up !. A wonderful series, roll on Series Two. A TV Series that gets you hooked from the start & stays that way !. A full Five Star rating.

Major embarrassment for Berlin's branch of the CIA. Mysterious whistleblower Thomas Shaw is leaking details of its activities, identifying agents, promising revelations about dodgy practices. Reputations are on the line. Daniel Miller is sent in to investigate, he soon to team up with former mate Hector DeJean. Richard Armitage and Rhys Ifans impress in the two roles, lives of both at risk as events unfold.Be advised that here is a shady world where duplicity abounds. So many secret agendas. So much treachery. Is anybody quite as seemed? All the way through, bewildering twists and turns (not helped by some of the confusing chronology).Well done, viewers who managed to keep up! Others may emerge little the wiser, feeling let down by an offering ultimately masquerading as meaningful.Not a good advertisement for the security services portrayed.Ten episodes of around fifty minutes. No bonuses.

. . . but I didn't. There was not a single character with whom to sympathise: everyone was was a liar and a cheat, and everyone oscillates between corrupting and being corrupted. Each episode left me feeling as if I'd stuffed my face with a pork pie only to see from the label that it was past its sell-by date. I gave up after part 5 - which was sad because I REALLY wanted to like this . . . but I didn't.

Richard armitage is brilliant in this modern spy series, its not the most action packed series but the story and characters keep this train moving.