‘Unfamiliar’ Review: A Familiar Spy Story, Sharply Reassembled (Netflix)

If you switch Unfamiliar from its original German audio track to English —setting aside the obvious limitations of dubbing— you quickly realize that the series barely changes. At a certain point, the formulas and plot devices of spy stories start to repeat themselves, regardless of the country of origin. What Paul Coates, the creator of the series, does here is essentially blend two or three familiar genre tropes into a single narrative. The most prominent is the retired spy who is forced back into action. In this case, there are two of them: a couple, Simon (Felix Kramer) and Meret (Susanne Wolff). They’re retired, they have a teenage daughter, they own a restaurant—and, for an added layer of mystery, they officially don’t exist.

In other words, the spies they once were are legally dead, and their current, domestic, perfectly ordinary identity is a carefully constructed façade. At least it is for the parents. Their daughter Nina (Maja Bons), who turns sixteen as the story begins, has no idea about her parents’ past. Still, they’re not entirely out of the game. Simon and Meret run something akin to a safe house, accessible only through a specific set of steps, where people in need of hiding can take refuge. That’s where a badly wounded man shows up—one we’ve already seen injure himself—who soon makes it clear that he’s there to kill them. The question, of course, is why he’s appeared now.

Another classic espionage template comes into play: the unresolved operation from years ago that suddenly resurfaces. Through a few pointed remarks, it becomes clear that the assassin is tied to a botched mission that took place sixteen years earlier in Belarus, an incident that ultimately drove Simon and Meret out of the profession. The man hunting them is Josef Koleev (Samuel Finzi), someone connected to that operation who now needs to “eliminate” them, for reasons that will gradually come to light. Koleev is also on the radar of the BND—the German equivalent of the CIA—which suspects he’s settling in the country as a Russian spy, conveniently “hidden” in plain sight as the husband of the Russian ambassador.

As different factions try to stop him while Koleev closes in on the former spies—and with the suggestion that there may be moles feeding information to the enemy—a family drama slowly takes shape. Here Unfamiliar taps into yet another espionage tradition, one reminiscent of The Americans: the marital tensions between Simon and Meret, their obsessive protectiveness toward their daughter, and the secrets they keep, both from her and from each other, about who they really are. It’s not hard to see how all of this ultimately ties back to what happened in Belarus.

Secret agents, ambassadors, intelligence officers, and military figures populate a story that is just as concerned with families, illness, and complicated romantic relationships. Like Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the central couple must kill those trying to kill them, stay on the run, protect their teenage daughter, make sense of a sixteen-year-old conflict still riddled with lies, and cope with a marriage that is slowly but steadily falling apart. All of this unfolds against the broader geopolitical backdrop of the tense relationship between Russia and Germany.

Unfamiliar manages to balance these narrative threads with relative clarity and control, anchored by two protagonists the viewer comes to know—and, to a certain extent, empathize with. Simon is stubborn about his health (he has a serious condition and refuses surgery) and lies constantly, but it’s clear that his intentions are fundamentally good. Meret initially comes across as colder and more efficient—she single-handedly deals with the would-be killer in the opening—but over time a deeply maternal and protective side emerges. Once the truth about the past begins to surface, her behavior becomes even easier to understand.

Coates handles this mix of influences with efficiency, and that’s precisely why Unfamiliar ends up being a reasonably entertaining, smart series with a certain degree of visual polish. It’s easy to imagine a Hollywood remake, though one would hardly be necessary—the changes required would be minimal. In that sense, this German production feels like the work of a diligent student who has absorbed dozens of spy films and series and distilled them into a product that borrows a little from each to build a fairly solid narrative. The story Unfamiliar tells has been told countless times before. What this series does is reshuffle the pieces, move them around, and present the familiar as something that feels, if not entirely new, at least freshly reconfigured.