No wonder it looks so good

And those nightclub scenes are amazing.

Germany's 'Babylon Berlin' Crime Series Is Like 'Cabaret' On Cocaine

So much of the best stuff on Netflix is in some other language with English subtitles.

Wikipedia says this show cost $ 40 million.

Philip Kerr fans must love it, and if the novels it's based on are not available in English somebody's missing out on a good investment.

[Update: It looks like the first two of a Gereon Rath series are in English. The others not, or not yet.]

Says NPR,

German television is coming into its own.

After the recent stateside success of shows like Dark and Deutschland 83, the latest subtitled offering is a crime series set in 1920s Berlin.

Launching Tuesday on Netflix, Babylon Berlin (based on the crime novels of German writer Volker Kutscher) explores the Weimar era's raging nightlife, flourishing cabaret scene and brutal criminal underbelly.

In 1929, the capital of the Weimar Republic was a hedonistic city of extremes.

True to the party drug of the era, you could say this new series is Cabaret on cocaine.

The first season depicts a city on the edge of an abyss.

It's set before the rise of fascism, and a few months before the American stock market crash.

The political angle is fascinating, too.

Weimar died for the same reason the Spanish Republic did.

Far too much of the public, including all classes, the military, and government officials, was split between extremes of left and right committed to its destruction.

It did not die of sex and sinfulness.

The gays and the whores didn't bring Germany down.

Or Spain, for that matter.

Or Italy.

That is not how democracies perish.