This series really doesn’t kick in until the fourth episode (of six). Before that… I was wincing at some of the fights, which were extended and choreographed to the point you thought you were watching a lame kung fu movie. And the plot twists? They overtook the main plot itself. Which was not completely comprehensible and seemed trivial until the pieces fell in place halfway through.

So… Why am I writing about an imperfect series?

BECAUSE OF THE FEMALE STAR! Susanne Wolff as Meret Schäfer…

Meret and her husband Simon are spies for the BND, the German intelligence agency, or they were and they’re retired but maybe they’re still active, who knows…

And for some reason this guy Koleev… There’s this plot line all about what happened in Belarus, so Koleev is Belarusian? I mean is the BND really that concerned with that old Russian satellite? Eventually you find out Koleev is Russian, but they could have made that clear earlier, and I’m giving away nothing by telling you this, only making things more comprehensible.

So, it’s kinda like “Godfather III,” in that Meret and Simon are dragged back in, but…

This isn’t the typical action couple. Where the mean leads and the woman stands by and looks pretty. I won’t quite say that Meret wears the pants, but she takes initiative, she is not reluctant to enter a dicey situation, and how she behaves there…

Furthermore, Susanne Wolff is 52, actually she’ll be 53 next month, and the casting of a woman of this age in a starring role…

That’s not how Hollywood does it. And Wolff has not been sliced and diced to look younger than her years, she even has a scar in her chin that messes with the perfect image but makes her that much more relatable. Despite being a spy, Wolff feels real, she’s not overly concerned with her look, she’s comfortable.

Anyway, Meret is a loving mother, but she is also devious and…

She surprises you, where she’s coming from, what she’s doing, that’s part of the essence of the show.

But before that…

What we’ve got here is a lot of running around, as we, the viewer, try to figure out what is really going on. 

And it’s not wholly believable, what spy show ever is? In truth, a lot of what spies/undercover agents do is incredibly boring.

And the actions sequences, at first, were just too over the top. But as the characters developed…

I guess that most TV shows are about escape, that whew! moment when you’re out of harm’s way, whereas Meret is always leaning in, but unlike Sheryl Sandberg, her life is at risk and she’s not overpaid.

As for behaving this way…

Are the Shäfers too old for this sh*t? Have they lost their true identities over the years?

And…underneath it all you’ve got the relationship issues between Susanne and Simon…subtle, but they’re there, like in all marriages. Have you been forthcoming, honest, have you held back information…and at what cost?

Now “Unfamiliar” is not in the league of “Payback’ and so many other shows I’ve written about, but it’s right there on Netflix and it was in the Top Ten for a while and much better to watch this than the popular dreck that drops weekly and is a part of everyday conversation.

The imagery is rich and you feel like you’re in a foreign country, but not that you’re behind…Berlin comes across as just another metropolis where people live.

Like I said… The fight Meret gets into in the first episode almost had me turning off the series. It wasn’t until episode four that I was truly glued to the screen. But then I definitely was, I was caught up in the tension, I wanted to see how it all played out, at that point I was totally involved.

And that’s what I look for.