The final sequence of Deutschland 89 shows two of the main characters discussing whether their old life in East Germany has vanished forever. One is sure that it’s an end of an era: “Capitalism and democracy have won. There’s no alternatives left.” Cue a montage of the last three decades, splicing Donald Trump speeches with footage of the fall of the Berlin Wall — reversed, so it appears to be going back up. It seems that the triumphalism of 1989 is just as retro as the protagonists’ enthusiasm for Walkmans and portable phones.

The lesson at the end of the final episode (“The End of History”) is at least well-tailored for its launch date, as Germany marks thirty years since reunification. Yet such blunt didacticism — in a series backed by Amazon, no less — clashes with the general tone of the Deutschland trilogy, rarely guilty of such piety. Indeed, its success revolves more on its bid to cast a humanizing — sometimes even lighthearted — eye on a history that audiences think they know already, in the final years of East Germany.

The central character, Martin Rauch, is a reluctant recruit for the HV A, the foreign-intelligence branch of the Stasi, the East German secret police. In the first two series, set in 1983 and 1986, respectively, we had seen him deployed first as a double agent in West Germany and then in Angola and Libya. This third series begins back in the German Democratic Republic, just thirty-six hours before the Berlin Wall opened on November 9, 1989. Right from the start, we know where it’s going: East Germany is over, and now everyone has to reinvent themselves in the West.