EXBERLINER Issue 168, February 2018

FILM 2018
ZDF/Jule Roehr
RECEPTION: The series was an unlikely hit, with the
first season finale garnering 6.35 million viewers and a
19.5 percent market share. After scooping up German
Television Prizes for Best Script (Hess) and Best
Actress (Gerhardt) it won Best European Fictional
Production at France’s Festival de la Fiction TV.
OUR TAKE: If you’ve got the German skills, this is
a universal easy-watcher – an aesthetically pleasing
yet gripping three-parter of three women
trying to unchain themselves from suffocating
social conventions in the backdrop of 1950s City
West. HHHH
WHAT’S NEXT? Taking a page out of Deutschland
83’s “three years later” playbook, second series
Ku’damm 59 airs on ZDF on March 18. — JB
Dark Germany’s
Stranger Things
Premiered Dec 2017 on Netflix; 10 episodes,
45-57 minutes each; English subs available
PLOT: Two children go missing in the fictional
small town of Winden, kicking off a chain of events
that reveals the fractured relationships and dark
secrets between four families across three different
time periods. Teenager Jonas Kahnwald (Louis
Hofmann) and police chief Ulrich Nielsen (Oliver
Masucci) are among the first to uncover the supernatural
twist hinted at by the show’s tagline: “The
question is not where, but when”.
KEY FACTS: For Germany’s first-ever Netflix series,
the Berlin-based Swiss writer-director team Jantje
Friese and Baran bo Odar were originally tapped
to create a TV version of their 2014 hacker thriller
Who Am I; unconvinced, they pitched the idea for
Dark instead. Netflix hasn’t revealed the budget,
although Bild put it at €18 million.
BERLIN LOCATIONS: Winden is supposedly somewhere
in western Germany, but its rural roads and
dense woods bear a suspicious resemblance to the
area around Potsdam. You might recognise the
town church, Stahnsdorf’s Südwestkirchhof, from
Dark
You Are Wanted
Cate Blanchett’s Manifesto; meanwhile, Charlottenburg’s
Reinfelder-Schule stands in for the high
school, which plays a pivotal part in both presentday
and 1980s Winden.
RECEPTION: With rave reviews in the US and UK
and an 83 percent Rotten Tomatoes rating, the
show touted as “the German Stranger Things” was
an international success. Critics at home were less
enthusiastic, with Süddeutsche Zeitung calling the
show “underwhelming”.
OUR TAKE: Despite the small-town setting, the
missing kids and the 1980s nostalgia (swap Nena for
The Clash), the Stranger Things comparison doesn’t
actually apply – this show is far more convoluted,
more humourless and a lot, well, darker. But as long
as you manage to keep track of who’s related to
whom and whose younger self is which, it’s not hard
to get hooked. Just steer clear if you’re sick of Loststyle
tropes about fate versus free will. HHH
WHAT’S NEXT? The ending cliffhanger definitely
begs for a second season – and one is indeed on the
way, release date TBD. — AC
You Are Wanted
Schweighöfer gets serious
Premiered Mar 2017 on Amazon Prime; six episodes,
44-48 minutes each; English subs available
THE PLOT: Berlin hotel manager Lukas Franke
(Matthias Schweighöfer) falls victim to a hacker
attack, with the perpetrators rewriting his identity
to implicate him in an eco-terrorist group. In
the midst of trying to prove his innocence to his
friends, colleagues and family, he comes across another
victim, Lena Arandt (Karoline Herfurth), and
the two team up to put an end to the cyber attacks.
KEY FACTS: You Are Wanted is not only Germany’s
first Amazon Prime original series; it’s A-lister Matthias
Schweighöfer’s bid to jettison his reputation
as a goofy comedy star and do some “serious” acting.
His company Pantaleon Films produced the series
together with Warner Brothers.
BERLIN LOCATIONS: Present-day City West gets the
spotlight here. Lukas works at the Waldorf-Astoria
near Zoo station, and important scenes take place
2 March 2018,
8 pm,
Philharmonie
Berlin,
Kammermusiksaal
Tenebrae
Bach, Victoria, Henze
and MacMillan
Ensemble Resonanz
Justin Doyle Conductor
Tickets /Service
RIAS Kammerchor Berlin
FEBRUARY 2018 T + 49.(0)30.20 29 87 25
17
F + 49.(0).30.20 29 87 29
tickets@rias-kammerchor.de