Online giants battle over Cold War spy dramas

Netflix and Amazon were facing off for a Cold War clash of two German spy series on Tuesday after the phenomenal international success of espionage drama Deutschland 83.

Netflix has snapped up Downfall director Oliver Hirschbiegel’s highly-rated new show The Same Sky about a Stasi secret police agent sent on a “Romeo mission” to seduce a middle-aged single mother working in an Nato eavesdropping station in West Berlin.

The series, written by Paula Milne, the British Emmy-winner behind The Politician’s Wife, got rave reviews after its premiere late Monday at MIPCOM, the world’s biggest entertainment market in the French resort of Cannes.

Only hours earlier, Amazon had announced that it would premiere the sequel to Deutschland 83 — the most successful German series of all time — on its streaming service.

Despite being a relative flop at home, the RTL series about a wide-eyed East German border guard who is sent to spy on the West was a record-breaking hit abroad. Deutschland 86 will pick up the story of reluctant spook Martin Rauch’s life three years on, the producers said.

The Same Sky is set in 1974 when despite the thawing of relations between East and West, its producer said Berlin was a “hotbed of paranoia and spying, a covert frontline for both sides infiltrating every aspect of daily life.”