Review for Season 1 from 2015:
This is a German three-part mini-series from earlier this year. The episodes run between 90 and 105 minutes, the first is the shortest, the third the longest. The director is a bit experienced in terms of television filmmaking, but not too prolific. And he worked on rubbish like "Dr. Stefan Frank" or "Erkan & Stefan" in the past. But he is not the worst component here. There are no less than five writers (who pretentiously call themselves story editors) credited with this project and it looks like a typical example of too many cooks spoiling the broth. The cast is solid, many big names, but most of them were wasted like especially Martina Gedeck. The script rarely lends the actors a possibility to show their talent. Ludwig Trepte was also in here, but he is as bad as usual.
The setting is the final months of National Socialism in Germany, the issues are life during American and Russian occupation and two split German countries with the desire to leave one for the other. A big story line is about several main characters struggling with their relationships as some of them believe in communism and others in capitalism. Yet these almost 300 minutes have nothing worth watching that hasn't been done before and frequently better. What also hurts this is that the characters became more and more uninteresting as this went on and that's why it started to drag. Near the end, I didn't really care what would happen to them and that's frequently a death sentence for a film. Not recommended. (originally posted 5th June 2015)
This is a German three-part mini-series from earlier this year. The episodes run between 90 and 105 minutes, the first is the shortest, the third the longest. The director is a bit experienced in terms of television filmmaking, but not too prolific. And he worked on rubbish like "Dr. Stefan Frank" or "Erkan & Stefan" in the past. But he is not the worst component here. There are no less than five writers (who pretentiously call themselves story editors) credited with this project and it looks like a typical example of too many cooks spoiling the broth. The cast is solid, many big names, but most of them were wasted like especially Martina Gedeck. The script rarely lends the actors a possibility to show their talent. Ludwig Trepte was also in here, but he is as bad as usual.
The setting is the final months of National Socialism in Germany, the issues are life during American and Russian occupation and two split German countries with the desire to leave one for the other. A big story line is about several main characters struggling with their relationships as some of them believe in communism and others in capitalism. Yet these almost 300 minutes have nothing worth watching that hasn't been done before and frequently better. What also hurts this is that the characters became more and more uninteresting as this went on and that's why it started to drag. Near the end, I didn't really care what would happen to them and that's frequently a death sentence for a film. Not recommended. (originally posted 5th June 2015)
