'Babylon Berlin' Releases First Look as Final Season Begins Filming

Of the TV series from other networks surfaced by Netflix's almighty streaming algorithm over the last decade, the one I may be most grateful to it for is Babylon Berlin. Set in the waning days of the Weimar Republic in 1929, the series gives the outward appearance of being one of the dozens of stereotypical film-noir police procedurals that dominate Walter Presents' lineup, but the actual story told is how German nationalism rose in a sleeping democracy. Due to its uncanny topicality, the series built a cult audience in the spring of 2020, who found the subversive highlighting of wanton police brutality deployed by the government during moments like the historical Workers Day Riots a little too close to home.

Unfortunately, the show's sudden spike in popularity cracked the fragile relationship between the series' many producers, causing Season 4 never to make it to Netflix, and a four-year delay in getting the show's planned fifth and final season into production. However, much like The Handmaid's Tale, that managed to cause the series' final season right back into the uncanny valley, as the show's arc will end on March 5, 1933, 92 years to the day that I'm hitting publish on this post.

“In five weeks, the whole country was turned upside down,” series co-creator Tom Tykwer said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “Suddenly [Hitler’s stormtroopers] numbered in thousands, they became the police and were allowed to shoot and arrest socialists and communists. The first camps were opened, the whole of society was threatened on a massive scale, and at the same time, there was this promise that everything would be transformed.”