At sea there’s Hoffmann and Tennstedt at odds, the latter effectively turning much of the crew against Hoffmann, with sea battles and an intriguing twist at the end of the second episode further ratcheting up tensions. The young radio operator is a last-second addition to Hoffmann’s maiden U-boat voyage and, knowing he might not make it back, tells Simone that she needs to clandestinely give something to someone later that night, thus starting Simone’s complicated life of looking at the war from both sides.Ĭredit Das Boot for ramping up quickly and keeping multiple storylines rife with suspense. In La Rochelle she meets up with her younger brother, Frank (Leonard Schleicher, also excellent here), and is almost immediately and confusedly confronted with a life she didn’t know he was leading. On land, the story involves the arrival in La Rochelle of a French-speaking German woman, Simone Strasser ( Vicky Krieps of 2017’s Phantom Thread, who is superb), a translator for the German military who has always felt out of place - growing up in the border town of Alsace, France, she’s German but not German enough for those who come from Berlin, etc., and also not French, despite her fluent language skills and living in France. Betz, along with director Andreas Prochaska, building tension on two fronts. If that wasn’t enough for the junior Hoffmann to undertake, he’s immediately undercut by his First Watch Officer, or second in command, Karl Tennstedt (August Wittgenstein, The Crown), who has far more experience and is more aggressively combat-oriented than the calmer, rule-following Hoffmann.Īfter a little table setting, Das Boot becomes immediately thrilling and addictive, with co-creators and writers Tony Saint and Johannes W. The German navy is ramping up production of U-boats as a tactical advantage - in later episodes there’s information that they are the most feared weapon by Winston Churchill - but at the same time Germany is losing a striking number of its fleet, whether to Allied depth charges or mechanical failure.ĭas Boot centers on newly minted captain Klaus Hoffmann (Rick Okon), whose father was a legendary German U-boat captain who wrote the most authoritative book on what it’s like to live underwater and win at sea.
DAS BOOT NEW SERIES SERIES
The series begins in the Germany-occupied port town of La Rochelle, France, in 1942 (roughly nine months after the film’s ending).
What makes Das Boot particularly riveting, of course, is that so much of it takes place within the confines of a German U-boat (the vessel language before “submarine” was in use), with dangerous missions and pretty terrible conditions for the men in many cases, the U-boats themselves were untested (a feature in the original film, as well). Lizzy Caplan ( Castle Rock, Masters of Sex) and Vincent Kartheiser ( Mad Men) are Americans in the cast, but this is primarily a German effort with some French actors (and there are subtitles abounding, but mostly the actors are speaking English).
DAS BOOT NEW SERIES MOVIE
It’s not critical to have seen the original movie (though fans of German cinema will undoubtedly tell you to go do it anyway), since this eight-part series picks up where that one ended, thus becoming more of a sequel while still relying on the two source books from author Lothar-Gunther Buchheim ( Das Boot, Die Festung).
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