He competes against the “crime scene” on Sundays at 8:15 p.m. “This is the right opponent,” says comedian Till Reiners. “This is my fight at eye level, I would like to say.” The 37-year-old will be the successor to Sebastian Pufpaff in the 3sat satirical mix show.
For the first time he will moderate his “Happy Hour” with changing guests in the Berlin Kulturbrauerei on March 20th. Ten editions are planned for this year. The show should be a bit “more party-like and stand-up,” says Reiners. “And otherwise I have to fill in the big footsteps and not be completely wrong.”
TV viewers know Reiners from the “heute-show” and “Die Anstalt”. He studied politics and has been to poetry slam stages. Like his podcast colleague Moritz Neumeier, Reiners is a representative of the younger German cabaret scene.
A role model is Josef Hader
He knows the appeal of Instagram and YouTube and wants to use it on 3sat too. A role model for him is the Austrian Josef Hader. His sense of humor takes off, it can also be really dark. He has just won the German cabaret prize.
How Reiners ticks can be seen in the announcement of his current solo program “Flamingos am Kotti”. “So that everyone is on the same page: “Kotti” is the Kottbusser Tor in Berlin. There are drugs, poverty and always someone imitating a dog and wearing a Superman cape, and you never know: psychosis or After-hours? You can also sometimes see a family man buying spelled biscuits at Rossmann, while a woman on a unicycle is offering “poems for home use” in front of the shop – but everyone at Kotti knows: the guy with the spelled biscuits is the one here geek.”
What are the issues that drive Reiners? “No gender jokes, I can at least promise that,” he told the German Press Agency. “I think others are responsible for that: the 50+ division, which longs for the past. Others cover that quite well.”
He wanted to see what was going on socially. “I like to make fun of polarized discourses and that people always formulate extreme positions.” Reiners thinks it’s good to differentiate and think one step ahead.
You have to live with outrage
Statements that are taken out of context online and spark shitstorms: Reiners has never had anything like this happen. “Toitoitoi. But I assume that’s coming. I think you have to price that in by now.” That is part of the job: that you always have a shitstorm, that you have to fight and deal with it. “Unfortunately, that’s the way it is now, because people just don’t like walking around a corner mentally. And then the outrage starts.”
From Reiners’ point of view, the comedy scene in Berlin deserves a little more attention: it has been very lively and unique in Germany for two or three years. He sees a move away from the humor that was primarily shaped by Cologne, as we know it from the 1990s. He would like to present a few people from Berlin who are not yet on the screen.
Reiners knows that the 3sat audience is not very young. “We all have to go through this together and meet in the middle. I’m getting a little older, the others a little younger.” For him, 3sat means that you have stayed young. “There are a lot of good older people who are up for it, I think. And I’m not at all strange with the station, I feel very much at home there.”
In times of social media and media libraries, Reiners no longer thinks it is so important when a show is running – for example against the “crime scene”. What would be the greater honor that his role model Josef Hader switched on or a good rating? “But that’s a difficult question. I think the quota is in a range that you even notice when Josef Hader intervenes.” (dpa)