Kleo

Stories about vengeful women are nothing new — just ask Medea — yet the new millennium has seen a boom in tales of heroines, or anti-heroines, violently righting wrongs. Whether it’s Beatrix Kiddo in Kill Bill, the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, or Arya Stark in Game of Thrones, today’s pop culture finds a special frisson in bad-ass women who get revenge.Kleo Season 1 Download

We find the latest example in Netflix’s thriller Kleo, a cheerfully murderous German series that will make you think of Killing Eve. Here’s why: Its heroine, Kleo, is a cocky female assassin who wears wigs, struts around in disguises and knocks people off to the accompaniment of pop songs. Set shortly before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, her story equally recalls Tarantino movies like Inglourious Basterds and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood that fool around with historical facts. It puts a playful spin on the end of communism.The year is 1987, and Jella Haase is Kleo, the granddaughter of an East German big shot, who works as a crack assassin for the secret police, the Stasi. She does her job with great skill and panache. But after completing a successful hit at the Big Eden nightclub in West Berlin, she’s falsely charged with treason and sentenced to life in prison. Then history saves her. When the Wall comes down, Kleo is set free. Naturally, she sets about discovering who betrayed her — and making them pay.As in Killing Eve, Kleo has a pursuer with whom she forms a bond. In this case, he’s a man named Sven (Dimitrij Schaad) a shaggy West Berlin cop who nobody takes seriously. Sven had been present at the Big Eden murder and has been obsessed with tracking her down ever since. But it’s a dangerous business, for her investigations threaten some exceedingly powerful people, including actual historical figures like Erich Mielke, head of the Stasi.