WHow do I prepare for the long journey across the Atlantic? Everyone who does not have a well-scheduled package or cruise trip in front of them must ask themselves this question. The United States is particularly difficult to answer because the country is so sprawling and diverse. Anyone planning a hiking holiday in Montana or sunbathing in Florida will want to get in the mood differently than the metropolis hopper between Austin, Chicago and, of course, New York.
If you want, roll travel guides in advance. But is it also possible to get to know the country in other ways, for example through television series? The answer is: definitely yes. Almost every state is the setting for one or more epics that have local mentalities, dialects and landscapes at least as a supporting actor.
The icy laconicism of the Coen brothers’ Fargo, the cow dung-scented wealth of Dallas, the sultry swamp of myth in True Blood. It speaks for the quality of American series that they capture the essence of their locations so accurately and pointedly. Of course, the screen can never replace the journey itself. But he can offer a wonderful attunement.
New York: „Sex and the City“
There are many good arguments against this series: It is about four wealthy white women whose main interests are drinks and gossipdesigner fashion and the search for the man for life.
New York: “Sex and the City,” here starring Sarah Jessica Parker, is as entertainingly neurotic as the city it’s set in
What: WireImage/James Devaney
The movies are shockingly unfunny, and the follow-up series Just Like That tried too hard to keep up with the times. But if you want to see New York as a fairytale place of neuroses and longings, then the series has pace, wit and the appropriate deification for the city in which it is set and from whose spirit it lives.
Maryland: „The Wire“
From 2002 to 2008, this series consistently ranked at the top of the critics’ leaderboards. The urban devastation, the entanglement of good and evil and rampant racism are told in complex story arcs. Without subtitles, the German viewer is lost. The Wire portrays Baltimore, Maryland, as a hopeless ruin of post-industrial America just a few hundred miles from its capital, Washington.
Missouri: “Ozark”
The grandiose mountain and river panorama of Missouri plays a leading role in this series, namely as a supposedly ideal place for discreet money laundering. At least that’s the hope of financial advisor Marty Byrde, who is fleeing from Chicago with his family to this apparent idyll in order to reduce his mountain of debt. Of course it doesn’t succeed, because in the idyll that runs through the landscape of American series, home-made and foreign abysses await.
North Dakota: „Fargo“
The desolation of the landscape and the unrelenting cold of winter shaped the Coen brothers’ film and also the series, which was shot almost 20 years later. What often went wrong, the brothers have masterfully managed: The series quotes the film, but tells its own stories about wild gang wars, failed family idylls, small and large madness.
North Dakota: The eponymous location in “Fargo” plays a role at the beginning, but the series (here Chris Rock) is a tour through the entire Midwest to Missouri
Quelle: Alamy Stock Photo/LANDMARK MEDIA
The moral, if you can speak of it with the Coen brothers, is always the same: the USA is founded on blood, and in the end the bigger fish always wins.
Nordkalifornien: „Big Little Lies“
Reese Witherspoon is considered the richest actress in Hollywood. She achieved that by successfully betting on, well, women’s stuff. She was the threatened host on The Morning Show and co-produced Little Fires Everywhere and Big Little Lies, among others.
This series, lavishly cast with colleagues like Nicole Kidman and Meryl Streep, takes place in Monterey, in the picturesque coastal region of Northern California, where five mothers from the (self-) contented left-liberal middle class are involved in a mysterious murder.
Florida: „Miami Vice“
Admittedly a very nostalgic treat, and the humor of this series (1984-1989) has not aged well. But Miami is an interesting city: perhaps the most tropical in the United States and, given its proximity to Central American drugs, also one of the most competitive.
Florida: “Miami Vice” shows a candy-colored world – and its abysses
Quelle: picture-alliance/dpa/DB Universal Pictures Video
The two detectives in Ferraris and candy-colored clothes are of course prince charming, and their world has darkened significantly in the must-see 2006 movie. However, speedboats, beautiful women and fast cars still exist there.
Texas: „Dallas“
In the days of analog television (few channels, fixed times), this series was a worldwide sensation. Ironically, it depicts an America as its critics envisioned it.
The characters are either bores (clan mother Miss Ellie, son Ray) or devils (mainly super villain JR Ewing). And practically all are rich, but live in a dreariness of piefig family farm and the “Cattleman’s Club”, where cowboy boots and whiskey glasses are part of the basic equipment. The subversive, almost Brechtian message: We all keep our fingers crossed for the baddest.
Washington: „Twin Peaks“
A freak accident of television history. Director David Lynch transformed the small town of Snoqualmie in perpetually rainy Washington State into a place of black and gray magic and twisted characters. Officially, it’s about the mysterious death of beautiful Laura Palmer, but it’s also about cherry pie and the madness that lurks in the humblest log cabin.
Long before the triumph of The Sopranos, Twin Peaks proved that anything really is possible on television. The ingenious soundtrack by Angelo Badalamenti, the Richard Clayderman of the ’90s, boosted the career of techno musician Moby, who remade “Laura Palmer’s Theme” into his first global hit “Go”.
Louisiana: „True Blood“
A horror series (2008-2014) set in the wispy swamps of Louisiana. The vampires have given up their manhunt and feed on canned blood (“True Blood”), other horror creatures get involved, and of course there are bloodsuckers who don’t want to put up with this abstinence.
A parable of the AIDS crisis, of racism, of the inscrutability of the southern states? A bit of everything. The title sequence is timelessly beautiful: a possum run over, a river baptism and the song “Bad Things” by Jace Everett.
Massachusetts: „Mindhunter“
America is obsessed with its dark side. This series (2017-2019) tells of the beginnings of criminal psychology in the 1970s and is based on real investigators and cases. In an attempt to understand the nature and workings of serial killers, two FBI agents from Boston travel through the United States, which has been torn apart after the blue-eyed and bloody 1960s, and encounter incomprehensible deeds and the incomprehension of their colleagues.
Georgia: “Atlanta”
One developed by actor Donald Glover drama about an accidental rap star and the music city of Atlanta. The series was considered visionary when it was released in 2016 because white people only play supporting roles (especially as violent police officers). But even more important are the easy-going, almost sloppy flow of the story and the incidentally drawn portrait of one of the most important musical cities in the USA.
Oregon: „Portlandia“
Not only the headquarters of Nike, but also one of the world headquarters of alternative culture: Portland. This series (2010-2018) poked fun at the city’s over-the-top political correctness and over-bred food fads, which was all the more impactful because those trends spread from there around the world.
If you look closely, you will also find Portlandia in Long Island, Montana or Austin (Texas). There are countless guest appearances by well-known musicians and actors and there is no progressive plot, but rather loosely connected skits, comparable to a cozy crocheted blanket. Even a “Portlandia Cookbook” was written, which is a parody and a declaration of love in one.
Washington, D. C.: „Madam Secretary“
You first have to take a look at the style of the main actress, Téa Leonie, who always speaks as if the sleeping pill was just beginning to take effect. But the story about a former CIA agent-turned-secretary-of-state and later-president thrives on the juxtaposition of family life and office, as well as a relatively lucid depiction of the dirty business of politics in Washington.
Some of the secondary characters deserve their own series, especially the political colleague from China, an ice-cold party soldier and clandestine idealist.
Southern California: “Silicon Valley”
Today you might not make a comedy out of it, but from 2014 to 2019 this parody of the world headquarters of digital capitalism didn’t stop you laughing.
A group of near-geniuses is mumbling about revolutionary inventions in a chaotic flat share, while the established tech giants, esoteric eccentrics with shark instincts, take turns trying to destroy them or buy them. The species of “brogrammer”, i.e. programmers with muscles, is just one of the many accurate details.
Montana: „Yellowstone“
Played by Kevin Costner, a landowner and his violent clan try to defend their property and rough lifestyle from city dwellers willing to take over.
Montana: Kevin Costner (hat) plays a rancher in Yellowstone; the Neowestern series looks deep into rural America
Quelle: picture alliance/Everett Collection/Paramount Network
Not told in a particularly sophisticated way, this series, which started in 2018, apparently hit a nerve. It shows (and celebrates) rural America’s anger at coastal elites.
The text is an excerpt from Adriano Sack’s recently published “Instructions for use for the USA”, 240 pages, 16 euros, Piper Verlag.
Source: Piper Verlag