This spy drama came out of nowhere to compete with Netflix’s biggest shows

Netflix has a ton of original spy dramas to watch, including hits like The Night Agent, which dropped its third season in February and quickly shot to the top of Netflix’s charts, where it remained for weeks.

It had some strange bedfellows, as spies often do. February also saw the release of Unfamiliar, a German-language spy drama that got way less hype than The Night Agent, but which also climbed the charts. If you haven’t seen Unfamiliar yet, it’s a great watch that has the potential to blow up into a long-lasting series.

How Unfamiliar stands out

Spies of a certain age

Unfamiliar is about a married couple named Meret (Susanne Wolff) and Simon Schäfer (Felix Kramer). Years ago, they worked for the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) as spies, but have since retired and run a restaurant while they raise their 16-year-old daughter Nina (Maja Bons), who is completely ignorant about her parents’ sometimes violent past.

But that past comes knocking when a wounded man shows up on their doorstep asking for help. Meret and Simon haven’t completely gotten out of the spy game; they operate a small safe house for situations like this, but it becomes clear that this man isn’t just another fellow spy asking for shelter. Slowly, we learn about a botched operation in Belarus that Meret and Simon participated in over a decade ago, and how the consequences are coming back to haunt them all this time later.

There’s obviously a lot of drama baked into that premise. Now only do Meret and Simon find themselves having to fight for their lives years after they thought they’d left that part of their careers behind, they now have to protect a family they didn’t have back then. What’s more difficult: dealing with people trying to kill you or having to explain to your daughter that you’ve been keeping things from her all her life?

Also, unlike a lot of spy shows, Unfamiliar revolves around characters who are truly too old for this s**t. When James Bond (or even Peter Sutherland from The Night Agent) gets into a scrap, he can feel heroic and nigh-unstoppable, but Meret and Simon are in their 50s, and battling enemy spies takes a toll on their bodies that it didn’t used to. It makes the action scenes feel especially tense.

Once a spy, always a spy

Unfamiliar splits its time between action and family drama

Unfamiliar is well-paced and character-driven. It focuses on authenticity. The BND actually helped the producers with a lot of information, ensuring that the spycraft remains grounded.

And while the action scenes are solid and exciting, the focus remains on that spycraft, and the personal drama it leads to. Nina isn’t the only person that Meret and Simon have been lying to; it also comes out that they haven’t been totally honest with each other over the past decade and change, which perhaps should be expected given their careers; it’s hard to shake off a spy’s instincts even after you’ve gotten out of the game.

The first season of Unfamiliar ends on a cliffhanger, and Netflix hasn’t revealed whether it will be back for a second season. But considering how well it performed in comparison to some of Netflix’s higher-profile series, season 2 feels like a good possibility.

Unfamiliar is part of a great Netflix tradition

Netflix has huge success with foreign language shows

Credit: Courtesy of Netflix

Conventional wisdom would have it that some viewers may be put off by the fact that Unfamiliar is a German-language series, but Netflix has long challenged that cliche. The truth is that Netflix has found a ton of success with foreign language shows, and they’ve become an important part of the streamer’s identity. Squid Game is one of the biggest shows to ever run on the platform, and series like Money Heist, Lupin, All of Us Are Dead, and Narcos all have tons of fans.

There are even other successful German-language shows on Netflix, like Dark, one of the densest, most mind-bending series ever produced. And the people behind Unfamiliar previously produced Barbarians, a historical war drama about Germanic tribes in 9 A.D. Netflix is likely to continue to double down on this part of their business, and shows like Unfamiliar could help lead the way into that next phase.

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Drawbacks

Not everybody loves every single thing about Unfamiliar. While there are new elements like Meret and Simon needing to battle their aging bodies as well as their enemies, there are also things that will feel familiar to people who have watched other spy dramas. And while Unfamiliar tries to keep things realistic, some feel that the plot twists become a little more far-fetched and convoluted in the later going. That might be the kind of thing that could be redeemed by future seasons, if the producers can manage to tie everything together.

Unfamiliar is worth a try, although if it isn’t your cup of tea, you have plenty of other options. And if you’re tired of the whole spy genre, you can always go next door and partake of some of the fantastic detective series on Netflix.