Babylon Berlin Season 3 excellent in many ways but sure demands close attention!

Babylon Berlin, Season 3, in an odd way, reminded me of the great British series, The Crown: The amount of money and the creative energy to replicate what I will take to be the look, sound, sense of Berlin in 1929 down to the smallest detail: clothing, decor, street scenes, autos, implements (e.g., a 1929 telephone), music, entertainment, clubs, bars and dives,  prisons, hotels, government bureaus, the list could go on). In other ways BB is its own series entirely (with a nod to Berlin Alexanderplatz, a little earlier I think but the same locale), and for the most part exciting and engrossing in every episode and enormous in scope. Particularly in Season 3 we see the political forces coalesce, as the Communists face off against the National Socialist Party, and we know who's going to win out on that one - this series in S3 is really about the rise of the Nazi power. But there are many other plot strands in S3,  probably too many - a film financed by two sometimes-rival gangsters that leads to the death/killing of 3 of the star actresses; the trial and approach to the execution of Greta, convicted of planting a bomb in her employer's house killing him and his daughter - but who put her up to it?; a police investigator who goes off the rails; most of all the continued saga of Police detective Gereon Rath (Peter Kurth) and his complex relationship w/ his former sister-in-law whom he loves - and I'm leaving other aspects out such as the stock-market crash and the rise of the Hitler youth group and scenes of the gay Berlin subculture. So much that I honestly could follow maybe 80percent of the story line if that; for some that might not be a flaw; perhaps my concentration isn't the greatest of maybe the whole season demands a 2nd viewing (yikes, I forgot about the ongoing experiment to remake a human psyche through analysis and hypnosis!), so be warned, you have to give a lot of attention to this season to figure out how all these plot strands entwine and co-exist. I really think better plot recaps at the outset of each episode would help. My only disappointment, however, is the failure to develop the character of Charlotta Ritter (Liv Lisa Fries), who at the end of S2 was poised to become a full-fledged police detective; in this season, she never really takes the lead on any case, though it's clear she's the smartest one in the room. I appreciate that the season shows the sexism that she's up against, but I wanted her to have a stronger role as a protagonist and less of one as a victim. (Also, wish they'd had Kurth dance again.)

The excellence of Babylon Berlin and some concerns about the end of season 1 (no spoilers)

A few quibbles aside, the German miniseries Babylon Berlin is a powerful and provocative story throughout its 16 episodes, with many plot lines, betrayals, and reversals of fortune that keep you thinking and engaged throughout. The writing and acting are smart; the lead characters - Gereon Rath (Berlin homicide detective who finds himself investigating a plot against the state and a potential military coup) and Charlotte Ricker (a young woman in an impoverished and derelick Berlin family, working nights as a prostitute in a decadent nightclub frequented by vice-squad members among others and who aspires to become a police detective - are intelligent, complex, flawed, and appealing; and the whole company does a great job re-creating the louche atmosphere of Berlin in the 20s, complete with political instability, extremes of wealth and poverty, frenetic entertainment, cross-dressing and overt sexuality, hyperinflation, political battles, clashes between right- and left-wing forces. The season brings a few surprising twists (don't worry, no spoilers here) in the final episode and wraps successfully - while still managing to look forward to an anticipated season 2. That said, the final episode, while dramatic and exciting, seemed, unlike the preceding 15, more 007ish, with a shootout on a moving train, a dramatic underwater rescue, and other theatrics involving near superhuman skills and effort. Similarly - and I wonder if here it went off script from the source novel? - the final episode introduced some startling though hardly credible final plot twists and revelations that seem out of place in this series but admittedly leave the door open for further development and complications in future episodes.

Terrific and complex start to Season 1 of Babylon Berlin

Weighing in on the first half (8 episodes out of a massive 16-episode season) of the Netflex/German series Babylon Berlin, based on a set of crime novels that begin in the mid-90s and are set in the highly atmospheric time era of late 1920s Germany - which we've seen in numerous books (Berlin Alexanderplaz, e.g.), plays/movies (Cabaret), memoirs, even TV series (the aforementioned BA, by Fassbinder, which I'm waiting for Criterion to make available via streaming) -but maybe none as powerful and effective as this series, which will grip you from the first episode and never let go. It's smart, well acted, beautifully produced (astonishing re-creation of the era that rivals anything the BBC has done in its numerous historical dramas, except maybe the superior The Crown), and well written throughout. There's no doubt that it gets off to a violent start, but I encourage viewers to say w/ the series; there is some violence and grotesqueness, but it's always in service of the plot, never gratuitous or sensational. Also, the series introduces many plot lines at the start, and not all will be clear over the course of the first few episodes, which is by design, but as you stay w/ it these plot elements will clarify and cohere in smart and surprising ways. The central characters is a police detective, Gereon Rath, sent by his father - the chief of police in Cologne - to work on the vice squad in the Berlin police force on a particularly sensitive case - which we learn about over the course of # of episodes. He's in a dark and scary world, in which just about everyone is double-dealing and double-crossing, and Rath has a # of issues of his own, including a drug addiction and posttraumatic stress from his war experiences. Possibly the best character in the series is the young Charlotte who lives with her mother and siblings in Dickensian squalor and who gets by via temp work as a clerk/secretary in the Berlin PD and, at night, prostitution as an underground dance club. Working in the PD she develops a taste for detective work and shows herself to be really good at discerning info from clues - but her possibility of advancement is limited by a # of factors, blackmail, sexism, and the mores of her time and place. She's a strong, witty, and appealing character and it's obvious that the season (and more to come perhaps) needs her - even though her position is in jeopardy at the end of episode 8. There's a whole world of politics (both German and Russian), crime and vice, smuggling and arms dealing, addiction, PTSD, plus some family dramas, all played out within a world of fast living, high inflation, terrible unemployment, strikes and street demonstrations, police brutality, and of course, over the horizon, the imminent rise of fascism.