Stream It Or Skip It?

Too many times, we’ve watched thrillers that withhold information from viewers in a way that makes us feel like we’re being manipulated. Unfamiliar, a new German spy thriller on Netflix, reveals just enough in its first episode to give us hope that the reveals that are coming will feel mostly earned.

UNFAMILIAR: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: A man walks along the river at night. He sits on a bench, eats a sandwich, then takes out a gun and knife. He cuts a transponder out of his side and steps on it. Then he shoots himself in the knee.

The Gist:  Meret and Simon Schäfer (Susanne Wolff , Felix Kramer) are celebrating the 16th birthday of their daughter Nina (Maja Bons), with Simon cooking up a good meal for her at the family’s restaurant, which is next to their house. During the celebration, though, Simon gets a call from an unknown number. It’s a man who claims he was attacked — stabbed in the side and shot in the leg — and needs a place to hide.

That just happens to be Meret and Simon’s side hustle: The two of them are ex-agents of the German Foreign Intelligence Service, the BND, and they provide a protected space for people who need to hide and have the means to pay. When they secure the client, neither of them are sure the believe his story. They play evens-odds to see who stays and who goes back to their daughter.

At BND headquarters, Julika (Seyneb Saleh), an active agent, tells her boss Ben (Laurence Rupp) that a GRU target of theirs, Josef Koleev (Samuel Finzi), has been spotted in Berlin. He’s there without his wife, who has been appointed the Russian ambassador to Germany. To judge what the purpose of this longtime target’s visit is, Ben calls in his predecessor, Gregor Klein (Henry Hübchen), who is now retired.

While Meret talks to the client at the safe house, she hears something from him that indicates he might not be who he says he is: He indicates that Meret and Simon are brother and sister. According to Simon, the only time they had identities as siblings was in an operation in Belarus in 2008, sixteen years prior. We flash back to that operation, where Meret and Simon walk into a safe house to see Gregor shot in the gut and their pregnant asset Katya (Natalia Belitski) near-comatose from being poisoned. The person who left the scene like that was Koleev.

On one of the many cameras in the safe house, Meret sees the client transfer her fingerprint, which she saw him get from a drinking glass earlier, to an unknown person over the dark web. Meret tries to get information from the client about whom he’s working for, but he’s literally fights her to the death.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Created by Paul Coates, Unfamiliar has elements of The Americans, Mr. & Mrs. Smith and His & Hers.

Our Take: Unfamiliar works because, in its first episode, it tells enough story to get viewers invested in what Meret and Simon are involved in, but also contain enough layers of mystery to promise viewers will experience some interesting twists that don’t come out of nowhere.

Near the end of the episode, for instance, we see that, back in 2008, that Meret and Simon saved Katya’s baby, and there’s more than a suggestion that the baby is Nina. We also find out that Koleev has a mole at the BND. Finally, there is also the beginnings of the idea that Meret and Simon haven’t been completely honest with each other over the past 16 years, and they’ll have to navigate that as they make sure they stay alive.

It’s such a puzzle, that you would have thought that the show was based on a Harlan Coben novel. It’s not, however, which gives us hope that the twists won’t come out of left field and that the various plot threads will actually come together well.

As it is, though, we’re also enjoying how Wolff and Kramer play off each other as the longtime married couple, and we’re looking forward to seeing how that trust erodes as more and more things are revealed.

Performance Worth Watching: Henry Hübchen’s character Gregor Klein is a crusty old spy who knows a lot about a lot, and he’ll likely be guiding Meret and Simon as they figure out who is after them.

Sex And Skin: None in the first episode.

Parting Shot: Meret fields a phone call that leads her to say to Simon, “You lied to me.”

Sleeper Star: Maja Bons is Nina, Meret and Simon’s daughter, and she has her own ambitions, as we see when she DJs a rave on her birthday. But how will her life be upended by the surprises her parents unearth?

Most Pilot-y Line: One of the characters, Yul (Anand Batblieg Chuluunbaatar), has a function that we’re unsure of. Does he work at the restaurant? Is he a caretaker for Nina? Or is there a deeper role for him? We wish his function was more fleshed out in the first episode.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Unfamiliar is the rare thriller that lays out just enough story in its first episode to engage viewers, while leaving them in the dark about things without making them feel like they’re being manupulated.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.