But as one would expect from any show in which Stasi agents save the world, Das Unsichtbare Visier is, of course, frequently ridiculous. In the premiere episode, Bredebusch is tasked with infiltrating a secret network of Nazis planning a coup from Argentina, and along the way, he orchestrates an impossibly complex plan involving swapped identities and the seduction of a former Nazi intelligence officer. He also discovers an Italian monastery secretly smuggling Nazi war criminals to South America (an unsubtle attempt by East German propagandists to conflate Catholicism and Nazism). When he arrives in Argentina, he energetically dances with a local woman in a club. Jarringly, she is portrayed by a German actress in unevenly applied blackface. In another episode, a CIA agent clambers around a German castle in a full ninja-style bodysuit.

In its 40 years of existence, Defa created much more than spy films and TV shows. It is responsible for a number of well-regarded films, including The Murderers are Among Us, the first German film to be made after the end of World War II and an early attempt to grapple with German wartime guilt, and, in 1974, Jakob the Liar, the only East German film to be nominated for an Academy Award. But it is hard entirely to separate their art from the brutal regime it was meant to support.

But the contrast between the reality of the GDR and the illusion of Das Unsichtbare Visier becomes especially clear when you consider the show’s casting changes. When Armin Mueller-Stahl objected to some of the show’s political content, he was removed from the cast and later blacklisted. He finally fled to the West in 1980. One of his replacements, Gunter Schoss, was similarly forced out of the cast. One reason: he had argued that some of the show’s plots, especially that of the King Kong Flu episode, were simply too over the top to believe.

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