You have to feel sorry for the East Germans. There’s a sentence I never thought I’d write. It is 1986, Gorbachev’s Soviet Union has cut them loose, and Erich Honecker’s government is so desperate for capitalist cash it is importing West German rubbish. “Equality is expensive,” explains a Stasi functionary, unconvincingly.
Things have got so grim that Lenora Rauch, the villainous Stasi agent captivatingly played by Maria Schrader, has been scrambled to Cape Town to make money on an arms deal. Three years ago, Rauch’s retro-chic outfits in Deutschland 83 gave fashionistas conniptions. In this sequel, happily, she remains an elegant retort to the anti-Soviet propaganda that commies were dowdy. I know little about running a failing communist state, but surely if Rauch’s clothes budget had been cut, East Germany would still exist in 2019 and have a trade surplus.
Deutschland 86 (More 4) begins with Rauch and ANC collaborator Rose Seithathi (Florence Kasumba) strutting down apartheid-era corridors of power. Rauch is sporting diverting ringlets, Foster Grants, a figure-hugging calf-length black skirt and those 1980s must-haves, indoor leather gloves. Seithathi looks no less cool in chauffeur’s cap and black uniform. Together, they are womankind’s answer to John Travolta and Samuel L Jackson in Pulp Fiction. Then things get disgusting: they separately take “whites” and “non-whites” lifts.
But hold on to your shoulder pads: here comes the plot twist. It is not Nelson Mandela’s ANC but the apartheid government of South Africa to which the East Germans plan to flog rocket-launchers. Socialist equality is so expensive it needs to be bankrolled by weaponising a racist regime. Last time I looked, that wasn’t in the Communist Manifesto.
The two women arrive at the docks in a Rover V8 3500. After the deal goes awry because misogynistic Afrikaner goons fail to take her seriously, Rauch does something that goes against what remains of her principles. “I hate to say this,” she tells her boss, “but I need a man.”
And so she heads to communist Angola to recruit her nephew. You’ll remember Martin Rauch from Deutschland 83: he was the rookie border guard whom Aunt Lenora induced to infiltrate West German military circles, but later was exiled to an Angolan orphanage after disobeying orders. (To be fair, he did so to stave off nuclear war.)
He is dubious about auntie’s scheme. “East, west,” he says. “Who are the good guys?” But she is insistent: unless she helps him, he will never see East Germany or his son again.
Anna and Jörg Winger’s 10-part sequel is as geopolitically fascinating as The Americans, the contemporaneous drama about two KGB agents subverting the US from within – and sartorially more compelling.
Back in East Berlin, things are getting worse. Martin’s Stasi agent ex, Annnett (Sonja Gerhardt), brokers a deal whereby East Germans test West German drugs, while Martin’s perma-smoking dad Martin Walter (Sylvester Groth) is inspired by The Love Boat to concoct a money-spinning arms-smuggling operation.
Three years before the Berlin Wall’s fall, cold warriors are trying to keep their necrotic state alive by any means necessary while, to us, in hindsight, everything they do looks like moving deckchairs on the Titanic.
