I don’t think I’m just speaking for myself when I say that Portugal’s role in the Cold War is largely overlooked by Americans.

But what I can say is that it’s an excellent history lesson in a stylish package. I can’t say much about Glória because it’s so plot-driven that it’s hard not to reveal spoilers. Its efforts at propaganda are more directed toward the middle east. Nowadays, RFE still exists, and is a legitimate station in some communist countries. A lot of spy craft surrounded RFE, and there was always an element of danger in working for them. The Soviets spent a lot of time and effort jamming RFE broadcasts, so there was a constant need for RFE engineers to find workarounds. The first such station was in Munich, broadcasting to Czechoslovakia. How it worked is RFE would build or use radio stations near the borders of communist countries. Radio Free Europe is largely credited with contributing to the fall of communism in the Eastern Bloc of European countries.

Radio Free Europe (RFE) was created in 1950 by the United States to broadcast news and political commentary into communist countries where there was no free press. Glória will remind you of other period spy series, such as The Same Skyor The Sleepers. So, it’s spy-vs-spy, and you can’t trust anyone. Turns out that in this tiny dusty town, almost everyone is a spy for someone, whether it’s PIDE (the Portuguese secret police), the CIA, or the KGB. We soon discover that João is a spy for the KGB, which puts him directly at odds with his father and his country, which is run by the conservative and nationalist authoritarian António de Oliveira Salazar. It’s 1968, and João Vidal (Miguel Nunes), the son of Portugal’s Secretary of State, has just taken a job as an engineer at radio station RARET, the Radio Free Europe station. There is a small town in Portugal, called Gloria de Ribatejo, that happens to be perfectly situated for Radio Free Europe to broadcast anti-Soviet propaganda into Eastern Bloc countries.

Glória is a Portuguese cold-war spy series on Netflix that is based on true events.

Spy vs spy ps2 review