2024-03-29 06:47:27
The still relatively young year already has a lot to offer in terms of new series. However, since rummaging through media libraries and streaming services can be tedious, we have made a small preselection for you – regardless of whether you like it contemplative or bloody. Among other things, with the adaptation of one of the most interesting science fiction novels and the appropriate accompaniment to the Kafka year.
“Kafka” (ARD)
Someone must have made a film of Franz K. – and then also German television, which itself is notorious for its Kafkaesque authority structures! But the six-part mini-series “Kafka” (freely available in the ARD media library) is a fantastic labyrinth through which the viewer wanders just as curiously, breathlessly and astonished as the main character, who Joel Basman plays so enigmatically and freshly, as if Franz Kafka were literally a blank slate – freed from the tragic kitsch that has now surrounded the character like a fog enveloped.
The writer and screenwriter Daniel Kehlmann and the director David Schalko have created an entertainment work of art that has nothing to do with the usual German television realism: a wild mixture of early cinema and pop postcard aesthetics, expressionist chamber drama and surrealist fantasy. Each storyline finds its own narrative perspective – from the young man’s friendship between Max Brod and Franz Kafka, a late Habsburg “bromance” between a brothel and a civil service job, to the dark but also slapstick-funny family scenes in the Kafka house (surmounted by Nicholas Ofczarek as he sits titanically at the dinner table Father) to the sun-drenched but highly complicated love story with Milena (Liv Lisa Fries), which brings a touch of “Babylon Vienna” into the series and demonstrates the almost crazy modernity of the relationship discourses of the 1920s.
Close friends: Max Brod (David Kross) and Franz Kafka (Joel Basman)
Those: NDR/Superfilm
Kafka himself, with his daily workout routines, compulsive eating habits and pronounced work-life difficulties, also seems like a hipster nerd with Asperger’s symptoms who arrived a hundred years too early. Was Kafka of all people – this professional of misfortune who left behind a work almost intentionally unfinished – a self-optimizer? “I can stumble,” he says, not without pride, as he enters his father’s company as the newly appointed managing director and actually stumbles very clumsily. The sentence from a letter to Felice Bauer, which, like many original quotations, stands erratically and beautifully in the world of images in this series, summarizes Kafka’s paradoxical and unrivaled mastery. You don’t want to stop watching him fail in this series. Andreas Rosenfelder
„3 Body Problem“ (Netflix)
There aren’t many science fiction series that deal with philosophical or even theological mysteries of the world, but at the same time rely on big pictures. “Devs” (2020) by Alex Garland comes to mind, this slowly and rigorously told masterpiece about Silicon Valley’s gigantomania regarding artificial intelligence. Now Netflix is following suit with “3 Body Problem,” a film adaptation of the bestseller “Trisolaris” by Liu Cixin (Liu being his last name, as is usual in Chinese) by the makers of “Games of Thrones.” Define the recipe for success, says this combination.
The first impression is pleasing: “3 Body Problem” uses a power of images in its eight episodes that is unrivaled among series. A mystery thriller that gets under your skin develops, ranging from the Chinese Cultural Revolution under Mao Tse-tung to present-day Great Britain. Compared to the original book, a lot of things have been fantasized and relocated from China to the West for the Netflix audience, not always for the good of the narrative, which tends to weaken in the long run. If you like it pure and more faithful to the original, you should make do with the Chinese film adaptation “Three-Body” (2023), which allows itself more narrative scope with 30 episodes and doesn’t have to hide when it comes to visual power.
In “3 Body Problem” you are rooting for humanity. Will she still get the hang of things? Or is everything, like the laws of nature itself, getting out of control? In the end it’s progress or barbarism. The planetary or galactic catastrophes that Earth’s inhabitants will have to deal with should not be revealed here. In any case, an Easter miracle will not save humanity, it can only be done by itself. Good stuff for the holidays. Jakob Hayner
also read
Serie „3 Body Problem“
„The Gentlemen“ (Netflix)
Inheriting is a difficult thing. It can be a blessing and a curse. Someone feels treated unfairly, another feels guilty because of their complicated relationship with the deceased. For soldier Eddie Halstead, things are even more confusing. He not only inherits his noble family’s large estate in England, but also a hashish plantation and entry into the gangster world. Eddie resists his new role, but soon realizes that he is a very talented criminal.
With “The Gentlemen”, Guy Ritchie has achieved something between “Glass Onion” and “Peaky Blinders” – including an homage to “Breaking Bad”, because Giancarlo Esposito also plays a shady character here. So you can relax in the homely atmosphere of a castle in the middle of the English countryside, with a log fire and afternoon tea, before things get absurd and brutal again. The dark humor and the reliable cliffhangers after each episode make the series the perfect binge-watching for the Easter holidays. Lena Karger
„True Detective: Night Country“ (Sky/Wow)
Nomen est omen, even if in this case there was a fair amount of cheek involved: In 2014, Nic Pizzolatto, then a relative newcomer to series, wrote a crime series that was called that and actually lived up to its name: a colleague recently called it “the high mass of the TV thriller”. called. Pizzolatto also wrote the (decent) seasons two and three, but HBO has put season four in the hands of Issa López – a good choice, as it turns out.
Jodie Foster as bad-tempered Liz Danvers
Source: Warner
Because “True Detective: Night Country” not only follows on from the first case in terms of content, season four can also compete with it in terms of atmosphere – perhaps precisely because the ice-cold Alaska (“played” by Iceland, by the way) replaces the hot and humid southern states. Also to see: A fantastic and fantastically bad-tempered Jodie Foster. Wieland friend
also read
Besser als “Fack ju Göthe”
“After the Assassination” (Apple)
Since January 6, 2021, every conspiracy against America has been told differently, including this one, which actually begins on Good Friday. On Good Friday 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was fatally wounded by an assassin in his box at Ford’s Theater in Washington – Lincoln died the following morning. But the shooter, an actor named John Wilkes Booth, had escaped – after a murder in front of a full house and a jump in which he broke his leg to boot.
Monica Beletsky’s true crime historical series begins with this outrageous event – and expands the conspiracy episode by episode. In fact, the dark brown images show much more than just a criminal hunt. Unfortunately, AppleTV+ only provides the necessary replenishment once a week, but four episodes can be seen just in time for Good Friday. Wieland friend
“Oderbruch” (ARD)
The East is wildest on its eastern border. In the Oderbruch, at least in some areas, the natives are still among themselves. But only until the corpses that are in the basement come to light. In “Oderbruch”, the series, one morning they pile up in the mud to form a hill higher than the Oder dike. Now they are invading Krewlow, strangers from the cities, from the Federal Police, from the State Criminal Police Office and from other anonymous state organs who are viewed in the town with as much suspicion as anyone who disturbs the deceptive calm.
One person returns home: Roland, the police officer, left the village when he was young because he was already uncomfortable with a lot of things back then, but perhaps also because Krewlow was simply too small for him. As a local confidant, Roland (Felix Kramer as a native East Berliner) is supposed to elicit their dark secrets from the stubborn Easterners.
Make a gruesome discovery: Haskel (Leonard Kunz) and Sebastian (Sebastian Urzendowsky)
Quelle: picture alliance/dpa/CBS Studios/Syrreal Dogs GmbH/ARD Degeto/Stefan Erhard
Everything you would want to see in the Wild East is there: war dead from the epic battles with the Russians around Berlin, lots of wide open land at unbeatable prices, vintage cars with two-stroke engines and original East Germans. The old Defa guard was deployed for this: Winfried Glatzeder (“The Legend of Paul and Paula”), Volkmar Kleinert (“Time of the Storks”), André Hennicke (“Young People in the City”). Even Bettina Wegner, the songwriter and poet (“Children (are such small hands)”), plays along.
In the eight-part series, the east expands across Poland to Transylvania (Transylvania). The fact that ARD is reviving the myth of vampires in its series for its media library cannot be revealed too much. The vampire, like the werewolf and the zombie, was always a symbol of something. In “Oderbruch” he represents a dark power in the East, whatever that means.
In any case, there is more talk about the German East than in the last thirty years. That’s why it’s still far from over. Not only those who are thinking of moving to the countryside in Brandenburg should have seen “Oderbruch”, perhaps the best German series since “Dark”. Michael Mushroom
„Expats“ (Amazon Prime)
It only takes a second to throw life off track. Mercy looks at her cell phone to read a message, while the boy she is supposed to look after disappears. He was just there, now the earth has swallowed him. For six episodes in “Expats” you watch the misfortune spreading further and further and eating deeper into your souls: marriages, friendships, future plans fall apart, and, incidentally, the illusion of the higher classes that this can happen between classes give something like peace and familiarity.
Lulu Wang’s series about the fates of three American women in Hong Kong (two of whom are very rich and very privileged) is the opposite of feel-good television. But anyone who gets involved with her still feels happy: because you’re watching three great actresses, because you realize that Nicole Kidman’s face in close-up is more exciting than any backdrop, no matter how luxurious, in which you place her. And because you learn that the greatest misfortune in life is having no purpose and no hope – a message that fits well with Easter. Peter Praschl
#Kafka #Body #Problem #series #absolutely #Easter