There is really not very much to say about this as a thriller. Its well plotted, although a little muddling in the middle as two story threads start to be connected but its main interest for me, and a fascinating one, was the wonderfully evocative sense it gave of what it was like to live under a Communist regime. It gave me the same sort of insight that I felt that I got from The Lives of Others. The life that most lived seemed to be almost unbearably grey and grim with a heavy fatalism underlying everything. Smoking is astonishingly prevalent, even indoors and decor, like all other aspects of life there, comes across and drearily cheap with much mass-produced cheap wooden furniture in offices and private homes and one feels swamped by the infinite variety of brown tones that surround one all the time. The clothes look cheap and shabby, the buildings all around them shabby with what at least looks looks like unrepaired war damage (very likely; you can still see aspects of this in modern-day Budapest!)
There seems to be a tiredness about everyone and everything as if whatever one does will never really have much if any effect, not least as ‘the authorities’ in their manifold forms, always have the last word. But characteristically, those in positions of authority eg a public prosecutor, are visibly from their surroundings; they look more dynamic, their clothes are much better and they have an energy that perhaps comes from the fact that they are confident and assured in their positions, unlike the majority of the population who just have to cope and get by and are always at risk of being the object of the secret police’s attention.
So, in fact, a fascinating series, but not for the reasons that I was intially expecting when I started to watch it.