Deutschland 89: 'We filmed it in the Stasi's old HQ – it's a horror museum'

The fall of the Berlin Wall was greeted with jubilation - but it also unleashed chaos and fear. As the cold war TV spy saga reaches 1989, its writers and stars recall those tumultuous days

When Joerg Winger did his military service in West Germany, he was given the job of snooping on Russian troops stationed in the GDR, or East Germany, the authoritarian regime on the other side of the iron curtain. It was the 80s," Joerg says. I was a radio signaller. And one Christmas, I remember the Russians wishing our officers seasons greetings - using their names. So we knew we must have a mole. That was the origin of the story."

Joerg is talking about his tense, thrilling and superbly wardrobed Deutschland TV series, which returns this month for its third and final outing. He created it with his wife, Anna, who had the idea of telling the story from the perspective of the mole. Enter our long-suffering young protagonist Martin Rauch, who goes undercover in the west and never seems more than five seconds away from being exposed.