Anyone who was around for the Cold War and not high knows that it wasn’t that much fun. So why are films and television indulging a sudden nostalgia for the era?

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Christ, I miss the Cold War”: This memorable exclamation from M in the 2006 James Bond film “Casino Royale” seems to have infected the brains of scriptwriters from Los Angeles to Berlin like a virus, with lasting and consequential reverberations. Perhaps not least because Judi Dench’s M, even in a power suit and pearls, managed to exude infinitely more erotic energy with one contemptuous snort than Daniel Craig’s 007 in tiny swimming trunks.

In any case, there has recently been a notable increase in films and television series about the era between the end of World War II and the fall of the Berlin Wall: from “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” (2011) to “The Americans” and (just last year) “Bridge of Spies,” “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,” and finally “Deutschland 83,” a US production filmed entirely in German. Not to mention the extraordinary German series “Weissensee” (three seasons between 2010 and 2015). Coincidence? There is of course only one correct answer to this question: I think not! …

Read more in the Berlin Policy Journal App – May/June 2016 issue.

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