Unfamiliar

MovieGuys

The "unfamiliar" is all too familiar by now. A supposedly dead husband-and-wife spy team runs a safe house in Germany. It's a paid proposition where injured secret squirrel types can come and hide out from those pursuing them. Someone, can you guess who (hint: they like vodka and bears), wants them dead. From this starting point it's a slow descent downhill. Contrivances abound to force the gears of this tale to work when they shouldn't. For example, a supposedly skilled operative tries to infiltrate the safe house to track down the couple and, for no obvious reason, assumes there are no hidden security cameras observing him. In a "safe house". In another scene the female spy who has tied up the infiltrating operative tells him he is tasked with killing them. Naturally he escapes and, unsurprisingly, tries to kill her. Lastly, she reveals they have a daughter rather than simply asking the captured operative if she and her husband are the only targets. It's pure idiocy. Why volunteer this kind of knowledge to an adversary? It's this kind of implausible, amateurish nonsense, and it's by no means the only example, that robs this series of any semblance of authenticity or even, at a stretch, believability. Things that do work are primarily the acting, which is of a high standard, and the action isn't awful, but once again we get this girl boss nonsense that has no legs in the real world. In summary, this series could have been worthwhile if a little more care and effort had been put into crafting a genuinely believable script. Aspects are sound, like the characterisations, but the actions of the protagonists often run counter to their presumed skills in spycraft and combat. A mediocre watch.