First Polish Netflix series: Welcome back, Iron Curtain!

At the beginning of the nineties, the US political scientist Francis Fukuyama had already proclaimed the "end of history". The collapse of the Eastern Bloc and thus the last major alternative to a free market economy and a democratic form of government did not seem like a cliffhanger to him, but a major season finale in world history.

In the new Netflix series "1983", whose first season with eight episodes can now be seen at the streaming provider, there has never been this end-time mood of the nineties, the East-West conflict never stopped.

"1983" thus offers a kind of speculative historiography, similar to "The Man in the High Castle" from Amazon, which plays in a Nazi-occupied America. Here the historical moment, in which fiction is detached from contemporary history, is not buried anywhere in World War II, but dates back to March 1983. There, Poland was shaken by a series of terrorist attacks that brought nation and state together again - and the communist regime survived.

Poland against "Harry Potter"

So welcome back, Iron Curtain! "1983" is set in Warsaw in 2003, in a Poland that now plays a bigger role on the stage of the world powers than Russia, while inside it diligently collects data, "censored" Harry Potter, suppressed all opposition and absolute obedience to the Demands party. Only the light brigade led by the young Effy resist the system. In the West, however, little new: Al Gore has indeed won the presidency, but on 11 September also responded to an invasion of Iraq.

In the midst of backroom deals, intelligence intrigues from KGB to Mossad, and the regime's fight against a revolutionary brigade, the individualists in the co-ordinated system, of course, shell out all the more powerfully: the embittered and disgraced Cop Anatol (Robert Wickiewicz) and the young law graduate Kajetan (Maciej Musia).

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The latter gets in the pilot episode after his final exam presented a mysterious photo of his professor - which brings him not only with Anatol, but also on the trail of a conspiracy. The entire first season is then primarily a puzzle game, which gradually gives rise to a different picture of the events in March 1983, as propagated by the national historiography.

"1983" is the first Polish-language Netflix series, part of the company's announced strategy of not only offering but also producing its own original series around the world. With Agnieszka Holland (most recently: "The Spur") could win a director also internationally respected for the first season, she shares the director's chair, quite remarkable, with three other women: Olga Chajdas, Agnieszka Smoczynska and Kasia Adamik.

Cold war, cold colors

Even if the ever effective staging of the four female directors effortlessly upholds the interest in the main plot of the conspiracy to be discovered, "1983" stylistically sometimes seems a bit affirmative. The Cold War is as usual bathed in cold colors, the episodes seldom break out of eternal grief, relying on the traditional dynamics of conspiracy paranoia and secret service confusion, as well as on typified characters such as the bald head general and the beautiful revolucer.

And yet, author and showrunner Joshua Long succeeds in linking intimate with world politics without constructing artificial plot structures. It is the image of little Kajetan kneeling in front of the coffin of those killed in the attack, in which the various motifs of the series come together: a protagonist in search of himself and his past, the image of the history of an entire nation, the Conspiracy behind the small as well as the big picture.

So it's about the whole thing, and that may be a bit like the risk of the series. "The truth is the only weapon of the mortals against the gods," the professor gives his protégé Kajetan still on the way before he himself died. At a time when this weapon seems to become duller, this leitmotiv looks a bit dated. Maybe that's why it is not the worst idea to dust it off again.

"1983", on Netflix