"Spy City" with "Preacher" star Dominic Cooper offers an agent story à la "James Bond", set in Berlin in the 1960s.
"A wall is damn better than a war": US President John F. Kennedy reacted with these pragmatic words when he learned of the Soviet plans to separate East and West Berlin with a wall. That was in 1961 when the Cold War threatened to get hot and today's capital of Germany was teeming with British, US, Soviet and French spies and double agents. A place full of intrigue, betrayal and paranoia, but also unexpected allies and forbidden love – and thus a perfect setting for a nerve-wracking thriller series.
That's what the makers of the German-British-Czech co-production "Spy City" thought. The first season of the MagentaTV production in cooperation with ZDF will be available from December 3 via the Deutsche Telekom streaming service. What interested hobby spies can expect in the six episodes (45 minutes each) of season one and why the series is worth more than just an inconspicuous agent look over the edge of a daily newspaper: here are the answers.
On the wall, on the lookout – that's what it's about
Germany, 1961. Set over ten years ago, the defeated country has already been divided into FRG and GDR. At this point in time, however, the construction of the Berlin Wall was only in the planning phase of the Soviet occupying power in order to concretize its influence in the German city in the truest sense of the word. British MI6 agent Fielding Scott (Dominic Cooper, 42) is one of the people who witnessed the historic and terrifying events in Berlin.
Officially he is a diplomat in the "Schlangengrube Berlin", secretly he is supposed to expose a traitor in his own ranks. He gets help from the German photographer Ulrike Faber (Johanna Wokalek, 45, "Barefoot"). His endeavor would be difficult enough under normal circumstances. But since the sealing off of East Berlin seems to be only a matter of time, trust is a rare commodity in the "most dangerous city in the world". And then, to make matters worse, Scott falls in love with the mysterious French agent Romane Portail (Severine Bloch) …
Bond in Berlin
"Spy City" invites the viewer on a journey through time to a place that seems almost unreal in today's era of globalization. Speaking of which: Instead of an MI6 agent who, like Pierce Brosnan (67) in "James Bond: Die Another Day", got behind the wheel of an invisible car in 2002 and made the reality reset under Daniel Craig (52) inevitable, thinks about it "Spy City" goes back to the very beginnings of the most famous double-zero agent in the world through the setting alone. As a reminder, in 1962 Sean Connery's (1930-2020) hunted for Dr. No and thus the first of 24 "James Bond" films to premiere.
All viewers who only know the main actor Dominic Cooper from the wacky series "Preacher" experience their blue miracle. The priest Jesse Custer, who proclaims the word of God with a thick southern accent in the comic adaptation, speaks flawless British English in the agent series. In fact, the "Mamma Mia!" Star is not an American at all, but a native of London – and after "Spy City" at the latest in the eyes of many a real contender for the role of a certain 007. Fun fact: The inventor of James Bond, author Ian Fleming, played Cooper in a British miniseries called "Fleming: The Man Who Became Bond". If that's not a sign …
Prague Spring in Berlin
Cooper may be the main character in the series, but the star is where the action takes place. As in the narrative of "Spy City" itself, nothing is as it might appear in this respect either. The series was not shot in Germany, instead the Czech capital Prague has been transformed into ours. And that with a lot of love for historical detail and not least with the use of modern computer technology.
The result is a six-part series that is tonally reminiscent of films such as "Dame, König, As, Spion" with Oscar winner Gary Oldman (62) or series of the brand "Homeland". Also located in divided Berlin, only provided with significantly more Neue Deutsche Welle synths due to the period of the plot (1989), the agent thriller "Atomic Blonde" with Charlize Theron (45) should also be mentioned. Like these three examples, "Spy City" lives from the probing question of whom to trust and mistrust with all this double and triple fraud. Anyone who can enjoy such psychological cat-and-mouse games can look forward to a trip to the "city of spies" on MagentaTV from December 3rd without hesitation.