Maritim commissions Audio Quants for a third BND season

The exceptional audio drama series launched in September 2022, originally developed by author Lars-Henning Jung from an idea by producers Christoph Lehmann and Sebastian Pobot. In its first 12 episodes, the series won over many listeners and found its fans by combining historically documented events, scandals and cases with fictional characters and plots. Producer and director Christoph Lehmann recalls: “People could only imagine cool and entertaining series featuring US intelligence agencies or Britain’s MI6. We thought, why not give a German agency a cool portrayal for a change? Who knows that the CIA only came into being to keep an eye on the German intelligence service that had just been established with US money? We wanted a series that recalled historical events while still telling its story with distance and a light touch.”

How the first season began

The BND has a problem: top spy Klaus Gudwin has disappeared. This puts the careers of influential masterminds within the intelligence apparatus at risk, because Gudwin knows exactly which and how many skeletons Germany’s most important intelligence service has hidden away over the past decades. So his daughter Anna Gudwin, a student of cultural history, is promptly recruited to uncover her father’s fate. She undergoes a crash course to become an unofficial operative (NOC). And it quickly becomes clear: she is damn good and espionage runs in her blood. Anna’s search for Klaus takes the listener through the history of the BND and back again. From the Eastern Front of the Second World War and the beginnings of the Gehlen Organisation to the Himalayan mountains of Pakistan. What she actually discovers during her search, however, is far more significant: her own past, and that her childhood and her family were one great lie.

In the second season, Anna has new allies and must find her biological mother. While historical events continue to play a role in episodes 13–17, Anna is already beginning to understand where the journey is heading. A new opponent emerges. Tech billionaire Stephen Thaus has declared war on the structures of the “old world”. “The more we wanted to tell stories about the present, the further we had to move into fiction,” says director Christoph Lehmann. “Because the more recent an intelligence operation is, the less is naturally known about it. And well-documented historical cases are also very limited. Unsurprisingly, intelligence agencies, including the BND, are rather reluctant to share their intentions and objectives in books and newspapers.” In a present where some corporations are more powerful than governments, the writing team reasoned, it is quite conceivable that a powerful Silicon Valley entrepreneur might establish his own intelligence service to infiltrate governments and advance his interests. Episodes 18 to 23 in particular contain a little more action and are entirely fictional – although the cases always echo real events in world affairs, for example when a deadly virus from Wuhan must be prevented from wiping out half of humanity. Lehmann is candid: “The series has also been through a phase of finding itself. The pendulum swings between historically accurate storytelling, coming-of-age drama, social criticism, political thriller and action. Of course we also want to see what listeners like best and will take that into account in future episodes.”

In season 3, it’s down to daily business: because the world is burning

A new team is now taking over for the third season: Philip-Lazlo-Koch, who most recently wrote the Audible Original “SC0R1NG” (Scoring), is writing together with screenwriter Viktor Eirich. The two want to sharpen the series’ identity as a spy and secret agent series and combine fiction with real world events. While the first two seasons explored Anna’s fractured family background, sent her through the BND’s past and eliminated the immense threat of Stephen Thaus, it is now down to daily business: because the world is burning. In our fictional world, however, the BND is now officially getting something that has so far been reserved for the Americans and British, and may account for their head start in spy cinema: a department of special agents. “Die größten Fälle des BND – BOA”.

The fuse on the Middle East powder keg is glowing, Ukraine has been fighting a war of attrition with Russia for years, states across Africa are falling into the hands of military juntas, streams of refugees are backing up at western borders, tensions between the declining superpower USA and the rising power China keep increasing, more and more wars rage across the world, the effects of climate change are beginning to hit home and, throughout all this, epoch-making technological developments are transforming societies. The planet has become a global battleground of incompatible interests. Germany’s federal government, in any event, is in permanent crisis mode. And because the pressure is not letting up, strategists in the Chancellery are now putting their faith in the ability to act decisively in the international shark tank. In future, the Federal Intelligence Service must actively help to get ahead of events. Finally, acting instead of constantly reacting. There is money for this, a lot of money. And new powers. The BND is to become the sharpest blade in the arsenal of German security policy. A dream comes true for Dr Heinrich Gehlen, BND president and second-degree nephew of the BND’s founder. He realigns his agency, invests in technological upgrades and establishes a new unit: the “Besondere operative Ausführung” department – BOA for short. The top-secret task force is to intervene worldwide before local problems develop into full-blown crises reaching as far as Berlin. BOA operates covertly and outside parliamentary scrutiny. And Gehlen has exactly one person in mind to lead it: Anna Gudwin (voiced by Jenny Löffler).

The new episodes of “Die größten Fälle des BND” will be available from spring 2025 – one new episode every month.