Unfamiliar’s fictitious portrayal of hapless, rules-bound BND comes amid real-world calls to roll back postwar restraint
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n the new Netflix series Unfamiliar, two spies working for Germany’s foreign intelligence agency are trying to gauge the intentions of a Russian agent who has recently arrived in Berlin. They come up with a creative solution: hacking into his taxi’s dashcam and seizing footage of the spook as he shakes hands with a well-known hitman.
The six-part show revels in such flagrant disregard for red tape – the kind of brazen derring-do that Germany’s notoriously rule-bound Federal Intelligence Service (BND) can only dream of in real life.
Unfamiliar appears to gone down well with audiences. With more than 20m global views since its release in February, the show has become one of the most-watched non-English series on the US streamer over the last month.
