Netflix’s Newest Spy Thriller Is So Good, 6 Episodes Aren’t Nearly Enough

Published Sep 5, 2026, 11:07 PM EDT Amanda M. Castro is a Network TV writer at Collider and a New York–based journalist whose work has appeared in Newsweek, where she is an Associate Editor, and The U.S. Sun, where she previously served as a Senior Consumer Reporter. She specializes in network television coverage, delivering sharp, thoughtful analysis of long-running procedural hits and ambitious new dramas across broadcast TV. At Collider, Amanda explores character arcs, storytelling trends, and the cultural impact of network series that keep audiences tuning in week after week. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Amanda is bilingual and holds a degree in Communication, Film, and Media Studies from the University of New Haven. Netflix has no shortage of spy thrillers, but Unfamiliar actually trusts its audience to make deductions. The German-language thriller, which landed on the streamer as a six-episode limited series, knows exactly how much information to reveal and when to hold something back. Each revelation changes what we thought we knew about the story, the characters, and, most importantly, the marriage at its center. Unfamiliar has the chilly Berlin atmosphere, Russian intelligence operatives, and shadowy government conspiracies you’d expect from a modern espionage drama, but its most compelling conflict happens much closer to home. Meret and Simon Schäfer aren’t simply trying to figure out who is coming after them. They’re trying to determine how well they actually know the person they’ve spent the last 16 years beside. And six episodes suddenly feels like a pretty frustratingly small amount of time to spend with them. What Is Netflix's 'Unfamiliar' About? Image via Netflix / Courtesy Everett Collection Meret (Susanne Wolff) and Simon (Felix Kramer) appear to have built a quiet life in Berlin. They’re married, they run a restaurant and a secret safe house, and they’re raising their teenage daughter Nina (Maja Bons). There’s only one problem: The couple isn’t who their daughter thinks they are. Sixteen years earlier, Meret and Simon were agents for Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, or BND. They eventually abandoned their old identities and disappeared into a new life, leaving their past behind — or at least trying to. That arrangement starts to collapse on Nina’s 16th birthday, when an injured stranger arrives at their safe house claiming he needs protection. Meret immediately senses something is wrong, and she’s right. The stranger knows details about the couple’s past that he shouldn’t know, including information about an undercover operation in Belarus in 2008. That mission involved Josef Koleev (Samuel Finzi), a ruthless officer with Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency, who has now resurfaced in Berlin. 'Unfamiliar' Makes Its Spy Games Feel Personal Image via Netflix The show certainly delivers the expected spycraft, as characters hack databases, manipulate surveillance footage, break into secure locations, and resort to some decidedly unpleasant interrogation techniques. Even the BND itself gets an interesting treatment. Rather than presenting German intelligence as an impossibly efficient machine filled with James Bond-style super-spies, Unfamiliar portrays an agency constrained by bureaucracy, oversight, and the country’s stringent rules around intelligence gathering. The result is a world where Meret and Simon’s willingness to operate outside those boundaries becomes part of what makes them so effective and dangerous. Meret and Simon have been together long enough that they don’t need to explain themselves to one another. They have shared history, shorthand, and a deep understanding of how the other person operates, which makes the gradual erosion of their trust far more painful than a conventional spy-thriller betrayal. Their entire adult lives have been built around deception, and their former careers required multiple identities and carefully constructed lies, and they’ve carried those habits into the life they’ve created together. Meanwhile, Nina’s presence gives those secrets an additional weight. She has grown up believing she knows her parents. As pieces of their past begin surfacing, the consequences aren’t confined to Meret and Simon. Their daughter is forced to reconsider the people she thought she understood. Six Episodes of Unfamiliar Leave Plenty of Story Behind Image via Netflix The irony is that Unfamiliar‘s biggest strength also makes its six-episode run feel too short. The series is disciplined in its storytelling, and doesn’t spend hours wandering through unnecessary subplots. The show leaves plenty of room to keep exploring this world, particularly through the BND and characters such as Julika Ritter (Seyneb Saleh), a determined agent who is increasingly willing to trust her instincts rather than those above her. Josef and Vera Koleev’s marriage also introduces another fascinating variation on the show’s obsession with secrets, loyalty and power. There’s a reason audiences have compared Unfamiliar to shows such as The Americans, Slow Horses and Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Espionage is most interesting when the danger isn’t confined to some anonymous geopolitical crisis and is what happens when the lies required to survive professionally become inseparable from the lies people tell in their personal lives. Unfamiliar doesn’t need a bigger conspiracy or louder action scenes to justify another season. Meret and Simon’s story may reach a satisfying point, but there’s still plenty left to uncover, and after spending six episodes watching this carefully constructed web of lies unravel, it’s hard not to want another few hours inside it.