The German Netflix series “Kleo” wants to be many things: comedy, agent story, revenge thriller and drama. But the bottom line is that it’s just a crude mix without charm or content. German history cannot be told worse.
Kleo (Jella Haase), the title heroine of the German Netflix series of the same name, works in 1987 as an assassin at the East German Ministry for State Security. After a successful assassination attempt in West Berlin, however, the young woman is arrested and imprisoned by her own people. Kleo was only released in 1990 after the fall of the Berlin Wall. From now on she is on a vendetta to find and kill the people who betrayed her.
What sounds like a promising starting point for an exciting series quickly fizzles out into colorful chewing gum trash TV. Because the makers of “Kleo” are neither interested in German history nor in credited characters. The GDR history only serves as a backdrop for a crude mix of black pseudo-comedy, agent story and revenge thriller that has neither wit, nor charm, nor content. “Kleo” is a prime example of not telling history.
A detailed review of “Kleo” by Ronny Rüsch and Axel Max – now in a new episode of the ntv podcast “Oscars
“Oscars
(This article was first published on Friday, August 26, 2022.)
