Germany’s Television Landscape: Actors and Production Areas

Abstract

This chapter begins the actual investigation of German television drama, starting with an introduction to its structures. It describes production areas and central players by focusing on programme commissioners—a role that, like that of the commissioning editor, has diversified considerably since the 2010s, due to pay TV and streaming services beginning to produce German TV series. The second part of the chapter focuses on production companies. These are a very decisive factor in television drama production in Germany, since they, and not the broadcasters themselves, are who generally produce the series and kick off the screenwriting process alongside the actual writers. Regarding the quality drama segment, this look at production companies shows that the boundaries between television and film are becoming increasingly blurred. In addition to the current quality production—which in Germany is mostly concretised in miniseries—the chapter presents other series types and production areas that shape the German television series landscape. Hybrid forms of television film and series as well as broadcasting slots are taken into account. Schedule placements continue to structure German series production up to the present day, and, despite the non-linear distribution channels enabled by the internet, they still represent an important reference point in practitioners’ negotiations.

4.1 Programme Providers and Commissioners

Television series development and production in Germany is heterogeneous, such that it is not possible to identify one approach to quality drama. The chapter thus seeks to elaborate on this diversity when introducing the German television industry—an important manifestation of the “creative industry”, with its increased importance for society (Reckwitz 2017). Focusing on central institutions, actors and types of drama, the following sections describe the central contexts and reference points of the analysed industry discourse on German quality drama. The local television industry, this overview makes clear, is changing fundamentally. By discussing and adapting quality drama, practitioners are dealing with the broader transformations of Germany’s television landscape.

First of all, broadcasters and streaming platforms are central actors in this national television scene. Alongside individual freelancers and production companies, to which fictional productions are usually outsourced, these commissioners constitute the “project networks” (Sydow and Windeler 2001) and “screen idea work groups” (Macdonald 2010) and have significant influence on development and production processes. Compared to the 2000s and early 2010s, however, today many more programme providers order and distribute German TV dramas. In the past, just two main public-service stations—Das Erste (The First), run by ARD, and ZDF—and the commercial, ad-funded channels RTL and Sat.1, run by two opposing media conglomerates, regularly commissioned series and single TV films (Hickethier 1998, 422–424). During the investigation period of 2015–2023, other providers have increasingly joined them (see Table 4.1). Especially pay TV and streaming services have further diversified the “multilayered world of television” in Germany (Straubhaar 2007, 1). In addition, the established institutions have transformed and expanded. These structural changes produced lively discussions at the industry workshops and in the interviews.

Table 4.1 Institutions and players in Germany’s television series landscape (2023)

4.1.1 Public-Service Providers in Transition

One aspect that becomes strikingly apparent when looking at the public broadcasters is their media and institutional expansion: the ARD network, including its nine local broadcasters, and ZDF have been operating internet-distributed television services for some years now. But among the observed and interviewed practitioners, the degree of online engagement remained controversial. Several television professionals argued that ARD and ZDF still heavily orientate towards linear distribution and its audience figures. We can indeed still find evidence of this linear orientation—such as the many continuously produced crime procedurals anchored in fixed broadcast slots—but increasingly also counter-examples. Both ARD and ZDF now commission series viewable only online, or at least primarily designed for this non-linear form of distribution (e.g. Krei 2021b), such as All You Need (ARD, 2021–), allegedly Germany’s first queer TV series.

Linked to the stronger turn towards online distribution, a gradual transformation of the public broadcasters is evidenced in their intensified production of fictional and documentary serials, enabling audiences to binge-watch several episodes online. Some local broadcasters of the federal ARD network are also increasingly focusing on drama productions—including those that show clear ambitions towards quality and innovation. Hindafing (ARD/BR/Arte, 2017–2019), an acclaimed dramedy about a corrupt mayor in a less than idyllic small Bavarian town, is an example of such a recent “local” quality drama.

In the case of larger series projects for the joint programme Das Erste, Degeto Film usually collaborates with ARD. Founded in 1959, this subsidiary of all ARD broadcasters acquires and produces programmes, historically and still today, especially series and television films for Friday and Thursday prime-time slots (see Mikos 2021, 179). Unlike the individual ARD stations, Degeto operates in a market economy, which is why it can be classified as a neoliberal extension of public broadcasting. Through commercial subsidiaries and affiliations, the public-service system in general has developed into a corporation, if we follow the assessment of Dominik Graf and Martin Farkas (2014) in their documentary essay Es werde Stadt!/It Will Be a City! (WDR et al. 2013–2014) on the status quo of German television. Instead of remaining reliable partners in the free labour market of the hectically ramped-up media industry of the 1990s, ARD and ZDF set up profit-oriented film production companies, Graf and Farkas diagnose.

In addition to ARD, its local broadcasters and its subsidiaries, other public broadcasters are increasingly focusing on series, including the French-German culture channel Arte. It shows “arty”, foreign-language and European series and is particularly interested in bilingual (especially French-German) dramas.

ARD’s and ZDF’s departments for films by young talent have also opened up to series, especially ZDF’s Das kleine Fernsehspiel (The Little Television Play). It traditionally focuses on “auteur” and debut films (Schreitmüller and Stein 1986) but now also encompasses the subdepartment Quantum. Quantum, according to the ZDF website, is a “format lab” in which single films, web series and multimedia projects that “explore new avenues in content, technique, or form” are developed (ZDF 2023, my translation). Eichwald, MdB (2014–2019, see Fig. 4.1) and the Covid-19 dramedy Drinnen – Im Internet sind alle gleich/Inside—On the Internet All Are Equal (2020), both considered in my production study, are Quantum developments.

Fig. 4.1

(© ZDF/Maor Waisburd)

Eichwald, MdB, a TV series from ZDF’s Das kleine Fernsehspiel

KiKA, the children’s channel of ARD and ZDF, based in Erfurt, Germany, and aimed at children aged three to 13, also commissions drama originals.¹ Examples from the focused period of investigation are, in addition to the long-running weekly preteen soap Schloss Einstein (1998–), the serial drama 5vor12/The Eleventh Hour (2017), about delinquent male youths in an Alpine boot camp, and the event Christmas series Beutolomäus und der wahre Weihnachtsmann/Beutolomäus and the Real Santa Claus (2017), which production participants described as “high-end” storytelling at an industry workshop (Schulte and Gößler 2017). The last example speaks to the fact that quality drama ambitions extend even into the realm of children’s television, which is often lower budget, although not in itself less expensive to produce (Hackl 2005, 54).

The children’s—or rather preteen—drama considered in my interviews, ECHT/Real (ZDF, 2021–, see Fig. 4.2), is the German adaptation of the Norwegian tween series Lik meg/Like Me (NRK Super, 2018–) and follows the real-time approach of SKAM (NRK, 2015–2017) (see Sundet 2020) and its German adaptation DRUCK/SKAM Germany (Funk/ZDF, 2018–) (see Krauß and Stock 2021). The scenes and sequences that make up the full episodes first appear online as clips. However, as it is a children’s programme, ECHT cannot integrate social media into its distribution in the same way SKAM and DRUCK can, and thus still relies on linear distribution on KiKA (see Krauß 2023d).

Fig. 4.2

(© ZDF/Studio Zentral)

ECHT, a preteen “real-time” drama

An entirely new, solely internet-based public commissioner is Funk, ARD and ZDF’s online media service for adolescents and young adults aged 14–29, launched in 2016 (Stollfuß 2019, 513–514). As a decentralised content network primarily integrating YouTube and various social media, Funk represents a media extension of public-service broadcasting. This “platformisation of public-service broadcasting” (Stollfuß 2021, 126) is controversial: It is often hard to recognise Funk, ARD and its respective local broadcasters, or ZDF as being behind the Funk content circulating on these external platforms. Instead of public-service principles, the few “GAFAM” corporations (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft) and TikTok shape its distribution.

In terms of personnel and institutions, Funk’s public-service media is expanded through the involvement of amateurs. Funk regularly recruits producers of digital, semi-professional formats through online video platforms such as YouTube and thus steps outside the established path of supporting new talent via state-run film schools (as analysed by Jenke 2013). However, Funk’s few drama originals—the SKAM adaptation DRUCK and the mystery coming-of-age drama Feelings (2023)—involve alumni of the traditional Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf, Potsdam, as well as well-known production companies.

As for ZDF specifically, institutional and programmatic expansions are visible particularly in its channel ZDFneo, founded in 2009. While conceived as an innovation platform for ZDF targeting a (relatively) young group of 14–49 (Helten 2012), the programme in reality reaches an average 60-year-old viewership. Its greatest ratings successes in the period under review have come from repeats of well-known ZDF crime procedurals, such as Ein starkes Team/A Strong Team (1994–) (Krei 2018). ZDFneo does, however, also produce new content: exclusive “Neoriginals”. Under this label, drama series are shown in the linear ZDFneo programme and, in particular, on ZDF’s online service (the so-called ZDF Mediathek, which unites ZDFneo and ZDF). Neoriginals include European co-productions such as the Danish-German Gidseltagningen, Countdown Copenhagen (ZDFneo/Kanal 5, 2017–2019) as well as the six-part crime drama Parfum/Perfume (2018–), loosely based on Patrick Süskind’s best-selling historical novel Perfume but set in the present, which Netflix distributed abroad. “ZDFneo’s own series are our answers to Netflix and Amazon”, announced Frank Zervos, head of one of ZDF’s two editorial department for fiction, in the online trade magazine DWDL.de in August 2018 (Niemeier 2020b, my translation). His statement obviously serves promotional purposes within and beyond the industry but also reveals how established institutions are changing through new ones.

ARD seems to be taking cues from ZDFneo with its new channel One, which subsumed the ARD special-interest channel Einsfestival (formerly EinsFestival) in 2016, in that it also focuses on a relatively young audience and broadcasts foreign series. However, One does not come close to ZDFneo’s market share (2.9% in 2020 and in October 2021; AGF Videoforschung 2021) and neither does it commission its own series to the same extent. In September 2020, the first One original finally debuted: the co-production Parlement/Parliament (One et al. 2020–). The political satire examines the European Parliament from the perspective of a young parliamentary assistant and was awarded the Grimme Award for fiction in 2021. Meanwhile, several indications suggest that One will be discontinued—due to increased political and public pressure on public broadcasters to downsize.

4.1.2 Advertising-Financed Channels

In advertising-financed commercial television—which in Germany means the duopoly of ProSiebenSat.1 Media and the RTL Group, as part of the Bertelsmann Group—smaller broadcasters have also started to commission drama series. In 2015, the beginning of the review period, the broadcaster Vox in particular came to the fore with Club der roten Bänder/Club of Red Bracelets (2015–2017), an adaptation of the Catalan original Polseres vermelles/Red Bracelets (TV3, 2011–2013). At the 2015 Winterclass Serial Writing and Producing workshop, the industry audience applauded proclamations about the ratings success of this teenage medical drama, which I used as one of the case studies to acquire interview partners. However, practitioners also criticised the programme for being produced too cheaply (Thielen and Kosack 2015). At around 400,000 euros per episode in the first season (see Bartel 2017), its production budget indicates the economic limitations of smaller broadcasters like Vox. Vox’s subsequent series productions—including Milk & Honey (2018), another fiction format adaptation, and Das Wichtigste im Leben/The Most Important Thing in Life (2019), an everyday family series—did not achieve the same ratings success in linear broadcasting as Club der roten Bänder.

The rest of the period of review revealed further attempts at implementing German TV series into linear programming interrupted by advertising, especially at RTL, the German-language free-to-air television channel owned by the RTL Group. Whereas RTL’s competitor Sat.1 (the first privately owned television network in Germany and part of the ProSiebenSat.1 Media group) now rarely invests in its own series (usually to little success), RTL tried to anchor another slot, Tuesday night, for German series fiction from 2018 onwards (Heine 2017). It ran, for example, the comedy of mistaken identity Sankt Maik (2018–2021) about a trickster disguised as a priest. In 2018, Hauke Bartel, then head of fiction at Vox and now co-head of all fiction for the German RTL Group, described RTL’s programming orientation: “RTL still relies very strongly on a classic ‘case of the week’ structure for procedurals, plus event dramas that are then made as two-parters or as individual films”. In 2023, RTL refreshed its Tuesday prime-time slot with crime procedural films such as Dünentod – Ein Nordsee-Krimi/Death in the Dunes—A North Sea Crime (2023), reminiscent of public-service crime shows; this move once more proved the popularity of 90-minute films in German TV fiction.

RTL Zwei (or RTL II), the second channel of the German RTL Group, is also trying its hand at commissioning original drama content. “Young fiction” (Krei 2019) such as Wir sind jetzt/We Are Now (2019–), a miniseries about a girl falling in love with her boyfriend’s best friend, specifically orients towards a young audience. However, rather than appearing in the linear programme, its first season—a mere four episodes—was first released as online content on the platform TV Now (now RTL+). At ProSieben, a German free-to-air television network owned by ProSiebenSat.1 Media, overlaps with video-on-demand subscription services are even more obvious. Jerks. (Joyn/Maxdome/ProSieben, 2017–2023), a mock-reality comedy about the friendship between the two leading actors Christian Ulmen and Fahri Yardım, ran in the ProSieben programme. However, it was initially conceived as the first German original for Maxdome, ProSiebenSat.1 Media’s streaming service. In the meantime, Jerks. is available on the Maxdome successor, Joyn.

The streaming portals of Germany’s two established commercial broadcasting groups constitute additional distribution environments and commissioners in the country’s television landscape (including streaming). On the one hand, there is RTL+ (formerly TV Now and even earlier RTLnow) on the part of the RTL Group, and on the other hand we have Joyn, the ProSiebenSat.1 Media platform launched in 2019, which, until 2022, operated in cooperation with the US media company Discovery. Some series run exclusively on these streaming services, and others appear there in advance of their linear “free TV” broadcast. Among the RTL Group’s German channels, Vox in particular has now positioned itself as a secondary distributor of RTL+ dramas, such as Herzogpark (2022), a satire of Munich’s glitterati, and Faking Hitler (2021), a miniseries on the media scandal around the falsified diaries of Adolf Hitler in the early 1980s. Both RTL+ and Joyn have two tiers: an advertising-financed tier with basic offerings, and a paid “premium” tier. Exclusive, original dramas are especially relevant for the latter, as they help to attract and retain subscribers as well as generate image and visibility. For years, however, German viewers’ interest in pay TV services has been rather low (see Hickethier 1998, 424).

4.1.3 Pay TV

Historically, pay TV played only a small role in Germany as compared to other European as well as international markets (see Eichner and Esser 2020, 190). In fact, until the 2010s, pay TV providers commissioned no TV dramas in Germany at all. Rather, Premiere and its successor, Sky Deutschland, invested more in licence fees for sports, and especially football, broadcasts. The comedy Add a Friend (2012–2014, TNT Serie), the first German series commissioned on pay TV, marked a turning point in this respect. The responsible broadcaster, TNT Serie (now WarnerTV Serie), which belongs to the US Warner Bros. Discovery group, provides a case study in this production study with its 4 Blocks (2017–2019), a gangster drama set in Berlin’s multicultural district Neukölln North. Like its sister channel TNT Comedy (WarnerTV Comedy since 2021), which now also commissions series (e.g. Arthur’s Law, 2018; The Mopes, 2021), TNT Serie/WarnerTV Serie so far has been available in pay TV “programme bouquets”, for example from Sky and telecommunications companies such as Telekom. TNT Serie collaborated with HBO Europe on the German-Romanian cyberthriller Hackerville (2018). HBO—the programme provider most often associated with quality TV (see Feuer 2007) and which also belongs to the Warner Bros. Discovery group—has thus joined the German television industry. So far, HBO series have been available in Germany mainly via the pay TV provider Sky and through RTL+. In the longer term, however,² the HBO Max streaming service might directly market HBO productions in Germany (Lorenzen 2021). As things stand, however, it seems unlikely HBO will increasingly pursue its own German content, because in 2022 it announced it would no longer commission Scandinavian, Dutch, Central European or Turkish originals for HBO Max (Szalai 2022). The departure from a “highly selective and locally-oriented approach” (Szczepanik 2021, 208), which had been tried and tested in Central and Eastern Europe, is probably due to budgetary pressures, caused by revenue loss amid the Covid-19 pandemic (FitzGerald et al. 2020) as well as the merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery in 2022 and the resulting restructuring.

Since the late 2010s, the pay TV service Sky Deutschland also included its own German original dramas in its programme, among them Babylon Berlin (2017–, Fig. 4.3), a high-budget period crime drama made in cooperation with ARD; the endtimes dystopian thriller 8 Tage/8 Days (2019); the German-Austrian crime drama Der Pass/The Pass (2018–2023), inspired by season one of the Danish-Swedish series Broen/Bron/The Bridge (SVT 1/DR1/ZDF, 2011–2018); and Das Boot/The Boat (2018–), a series sequel to the 1981 film of the same name, which was released in a multi-part television version in 1985. However, in the summer of 2023, Sky Deutschland announced, quite suddenly, that it would no longer be commissioning German fiction (Krei 2023b). The proclamation, which came as a surprise to industry insiders and media commentators, cited the rising cost of producing scripted content and the proliferation of streaming providers as reasons for the decision.

Fig. 4.3

(© ARD/Frédéric Batier/X Filme Creative Pool/ARD Degeto/Sky/Beta Film)

Babylon Berlin, a cooperation between pay TV and public television

Outside the Sky and WarnerTV channels, less prominent and significantly more cheaply produced pay TV dramas from Germany include Spides (2020), so far the singular series production of Syfy, which specialises in science fiction, as well as Post Mortem (2019), a chamber-play-like miniseries on 13th Street, which focuses on thrillers and crime. Both Syfy and 13th Street are niche channels belonging to the US company NBCUniversal and—similar to the TNT/WarnerTV channels—have been distributed via pay TV programme bouquets, especially on Sky. However, further productions from these marginal pay TV providers are currently not to be expected.

4.1.4 Transnational Streaming Providers

Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, the transnationally operating, US-based representatives of “streaming, ‘prestige’ television through algorithmic predictions” (Shapiro 2020, 660), presently commission drama in the German series market. They contribute to driving its transnational expansion (taken up in Chapter 6). In March 2017, Amazon Prime Video released its first German series, You Are Wanted (2017–2018), a cross-episode thriller about a hotel manager and family man who becomes the victim of hackers. The involvement of lead actor and director Matthias Schweighöfer, best known for commercially successful German cinema comedies (such as Friendship, 2010; What a Man, 2011; and 100 Dinge/100 Things, 2018), points to a clear mainstream orientation and, to that extent, conservative selection criteria, as other German Amazon projects indicate as well. For example, Amazon Prime Video has relied on established brands for several German projects: Pastewka (Sat.1, 2005–2014; Amazon Prime Video, 2018–2020) is a remake of the earlier comedy with the main actor of the same name, and Bibi & Tina – Die Serie (2020) follows on from the well-known children’s audio drama (1991–) and the four successful Bibi & Tina films (2014–2017). The Amazon production Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo/We Children from Zoo Station (2021), which this study considers through an interview with head writer Annette Hess, builds on the transnationally successful non-fiction book by Christiane Felscherinow, Kai Hermann and Horst Rieck and its well-known film adaptation Christiane F. – Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo/Christiane F (1981). Thereby, the TV version of Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo joins various series that tie in with well-known films and retell them serially as remakes or reboots, as does, for example, the Sky drama Das Boot.

In December 2017, Netflix released its first German original, Dark (2017–2020, Fig. 4.4), as a counterpart to Amazon’s You Are Wanted. A convoluted mystery drama set in different time periods and around several families’ existential entanglements, Dark clearly aims to set itself apart from previously dominant genres and tonalities in German television fiction and also from a simple case-per-episode structure. According to unofficial information shared at the Winterclass industry workshop (Kosack 2017), Netflix initially tried to reach young “tech-savvy men on computers”, a particularly elusive target group (Kosack 2017). Following German Netflix productions such as Wir sind die Welle/We Are the Wave (2019), a coming-of-age drama web series loosely based on Todd Strasser’s 1981 novel The Wave, and How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast) (2019–), a comedy about a high school student starting an online drug business, orientate even more clearly towards teenage viewers, an audience that the German television industry has long neglected in TV fiction (see Krauß 2020d, 164–165) and that also represents a focus for Netflix in other territories (Krauß and Stock 2020, 17–19). For Amazon Prime Video’s German commissions, such an overarching tendency is so far less evident. In principle, both streaming services’ German drama productions are continuing to diversify in both genre and tonality. Their German fiction programmes now include children’s series: the aforementioned Bibi & Tina – Die Serie; fantasy: Der Greif/The Gryphon (Amazon Prime Video, 2023), based on Wolfgang Hohlbein’s best-selling novel; and drama and “dramedy”, for a typically older and female audience: especially Das letzte Wort/The Last Word (Netflix, 2020), starring the well-known comedian Anke Engelke, and Zeit der Geheimnisse/Holiday Secrets (Netflix, 2019). These and other originals are joined by licence purchases, making Amazon and Netflix not only commissioners but also buyers in the German fiction market.

Fig. 4.4

(© Julia Terjung/Netflix)

Dark, the first German Netflix drama.

Internet-based television, especially in the area of subscription video-on-demand (SVoD), continues to unfurl. In November 2019, Apple TV+ became available in Germany, then in March 2020, Disney+, and in December 2022, Paramount+. They all have commissioned “local” German dramas: Apple TV+ announced the dark comedy Where’s Wanda? (2024) with the well-known actor Heike Makatsch. The first German originals for Disney+ address an adult audience and seem to aim at achieving diversity in content. Sam – Ein Sachse/Sam – A Saxon (2023), internationally marketed as a “Hulu original”, is about the first Afro-German policeman in East Germany. Deutsches Haus/German House (2023), based on a novel by screenwriter Annette Hess, follows the first Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt in 1963. However, Disney+ cancelled the previously announced drama Sultan City, about a family of Turkish origin where the father of three children mysteriously disappears (Lückerath 2021), because of “creative differences” (Staff 2023).

Even more than Disney+ and its cancelled Sultan City project, the cases of the SVoD services Paramount+ and Starzplay point to the fast pace and uncertainty of the German streaming market. Shortly after it began operations in Germany, Paramount+ released Der Scheich/The Sheikh (2022). This comedy, about a German con man claiming to be a Qatari sheikh, was the first TV series project of Swiss filmmaker Dani Levy, a founder of the German company X Filme Creative Pool (responsible for Babylon Berlin) and director of several motion pictures, mainly comedies (e.g. Stille Nacht/Silent Night, 1995). However, in 2024, Paramount+ decided to concentrate solely on US series. German drama productions released in 2023 were taken offline, and dramas waiting in the wings, such as Zeit Verbrechen/Love by Proxy (2024), suddenly needed to find new distributors (Mantel 2024). The Starzplay service, available for purchase through Amazon’s Prime Video Channels, announced in July 2022 the launch of its first German original, Nachts im Paradies/At Night in Paradise, a graphic novel adaptation starring the well-known German actor Jürgen Vogel (see Weis 2022). But just a few months later—shortly after Starzplay’s renaming to Lionsgate+—it was clear: this SVoD service was withdrawing from Germany and other European countries (Krei 2022).

Fluid boundaries between the local TV series landscape and online platforms are evident in the few German series (such as the comedy Bullshit, 2018) that YouTube produced for its paid SVoD service YouTube Premium (formerly YouTube Red) around 2018. Furthermore, new players in the German TV series landscape include telecommunication companies that have joined the ranks of series producers, similar to in other European markets. Telecommunication firms’ programme offerings point to further media transformations and expansions in Germany’s television industry. Arnim Butzen, vice president for TV and entertainment at Telekom, announced at the 2020 Berlinale Series Market that MagentaTV, which belongs to Telekom, would continue to focus on its original dramas—even after the critical failure of the German–French culture-clash comedy Deutsch-Les-Landes (MagentaTV/Amazon Studios, 2018; see e.g. Buß 2018). In 2021, MagentaTV accordingly released Wild Republic (2021), an adventure drama series about juvenile delinquents on the run in the Alps—another contribution to the growing number of teen TV dramas from Germany (Krauß and Stock 2021, 413); this was followed in 2022 by Oh Hell (2022), a dramedy about the post-adolescent antiheroine Helene, who is struggling with herself and her life. But in that same year, Telekom announced its withdrawal from the German drama business. In DWDL.de, Butzen justified this decision by saying that there are now fewer possible partnerships than in the past, as media companies prefer to keep distribution stages in-house (Lückerath 2022). Telekom’s MagentaTV had primarily relied on co-producers for its drama originals—such as Arte, ARD’s One channel and ARD’s local broadcasters WDR and SWR—Südwestrundfunk (Southwest Broadcasting), in the case of Wild Republic. Such collaborations evidence new, more flexible and more intensified networking between commissioners when it comes to co-financing (see Eichner 2021). In the sample period of 2015–2023, diversified business models emerged in this context.

4.1.5 Diversifying Business Models

The various platforms and broadcasters commissioning German drama series have diverse business models, and therefore address and conceptualise viewers differently. In the case of pay TV and SVoD services, at first glance the focus is on attracting and retaining subscribers. Some series are conceived as “behaviour-altering titles” (Conrad in Zarges 2020b) that motivate previously unreached or lost viewers to purchase a subscription. In some cases, however, the boundaries to advertising-financed programming are fluid—especially with RTL+ and Joyn and their supposedly free basic online services. Since November 2022, Netflix has also offered a basic subscription, with advertising, at a lower price point in Germany. This example underlines that platforms—as theorised more fundamentally by José van Dijck et al. (2018, 9) in The Platform Society—can modify their individual elements, including their business models.

In the cases of Apple (whose streaming service Apple TV+ likely will commission German dramas in the longer run, too; see Lückerath 2023) and Amazon, the streaming portals function merely as a kind of accessory so that their customers use their devices or corresponding online shops. The established advertising business in linear broadcasting, on the other hand, is declining into crisis and very likely will continue to shrink due to the digital transformation of the German TV market, accelerated by the Covid-19 crisis. In 2007, audience attractiveness (which derived its attractiveness according to the advertising industry) was still the central quality for commercial TV stations (Fröhlich 2007, 39), even though this quality is difficult to translate into production strategies (Kiefer 2001, 173). However, today, other and more complex economic approaches and evaluations are now conceivable. “Viewing numbers might no longer determine whether a series is renewed, as that decision may now be based on more discrete correlations”, Stephen Shapiro (2020, 661) points out with regard to a current “algorithmic television” (658). Internet distribution promises the possibility to collect more precise data on audiences, which the industry had already sought to control (Ang 1991). Now, selection criteria for scripts and renewal decisions have become more multifaceted and, with this data, an economically usable commodity is sought. The streaming portals’ various business models also include collecting data and selling it to other institutions (see van Dijck et al. 2018, 11).

Among the interviewed and observed practitioners, I found less a criticism of datafication, platformisation and their associated business practices and instead more of a feeling that, in view of the various commissioning and distribution options, the German TV drama industry is experiencing a “gold rush era” (e.g. von Borries 2019). This extremely positive finding of a “golden era” (the revelation of which Gunhild Agger [2020] deals with in more contexts and more generally) certainly is related to the period in which I conducted most of the interviews and observations: predominantly before the Covid-19 pandemic and before the quickly rising inflation and economic and energy crises that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This more recent scenario Tilmann P. Gangloff (2022, 71, my translation) sees as “grey clouds gathering over the German production industry”.

Even before the current economic gloom, concentration and shrinkage processes were repeatedly observed alongside the multiplication of distributors and commissioners. For example, Watchever, the streaming provider of the French media group Vivendi SA, announced its own German series in 2013 (Gropp 2013) but has long since ceased operations. Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, on the other hand, have continued to gain users in the wake of the coronavirus crisis (Lobigs 2020, 46; AGF Videoforschung 2020). Is the German series landscape threatened, in the longer term, by the duopoly of Netflix and Amazon, as Sean Fennessey (2017) feared for US independent cinema some years ago? At least for the time being, the central importance of public broadcasters still speaks against such a scenario in Germany as well as in other European television fiction markets.

4.1.6 Relevance of Public Broadcasters

Predominantly fee financed, public-service broadcasters have continuous and quite stable revenue (Goldmedia and Schneider 2020, 17). According to statistics from the European Audiovisual Observatory, the public-service ARD network finishes up second among producers of European fiction, in terms of the number of titles produced. ZDF makes it into the top 10 (Fontaine 2023, 35; see also Fontaine and Pumares 2018, 31). According to the 2018 Produzentenstudie (Producers Study), ARD and ZDF are roughly on par in terms of investment in fiction programmes from Germany, at circa 400 million euros, which puts them well ahead of ProSiebenSat.1 and the RTL Group (Castendyk and Goldhammer 2018, 56–57). Public broadcasters clearly dominate among the five broadcasters with the highest revenues in Germany (Hennecke and Rau 2015, 31). This trend has not fundamentally shifted as of 2024 (at the time of publication), despite increased investment from Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, as our look at series types and broadcast slots later on will underline. In times of economic crisis, the importance of public broadcasters may even increase further, as they are less dependent on the commercial situation than private-sector and transnational players.

Moreover, as Joachim Kosack (2017), one of the managing directors of UFA production house, pointed out at an industry workshop, ARD and ZDF are well-known and, thanks to fixed budgets, reliable partners for producers. Tried and tested relationships form a central selection criterion for actors in project networks (e.g. Eigler and Azarpour 2020, 2). New programme providers, on the other hand, still often come with uncertainty about how cooperations will be structured and how comprehensively and for how long they will invest in fiction productions from Germany. Klaus Zimmermann, producer of European “high-end” series such as Borgia (ZDF et al. 2011–2014), was therefore quite critical about commissioners such as Netflix in an interview published in 2018:

[T]hey make more noise than spend money. […] Am I successful if I have my show on Netflix? Or am I successful when I have my show on a broadcaster that has 5 million viewers? A lot of producers spend a lot of energy to get in business with new players, and not enough serving the traditional ones and making better television. (in Harris 2018, 326)

That is to say, one cannot describe the television series landscape in Germany solely in terms of its medial and institutional expansions; rather, one must keep an eye on long-standing, historically nurtured, often public-service structures. Traditions and public-service influences also become evident when looking at production companies. As further central institutions, they constitute a prominent aspect of the television industry in Germany.

4.2 Production Companies

As early as the 1960s, ARD and ZDF, the only German broadcasters at that time, began to obtain programme content via the free market and to externalise risks to production companies (Meier-Beer 1995, 58). Consequently, these companies form an essential part of series production project networks and have significant input in arranging them. Programme providers, in turn, select production companies according to whether they can competently put together and coordinate project networks (Windeler et al., 116). Producers often engage in so-called packaging in advance to score points with the commissioners. This tactic involves not just presenting the most dazzling collection of well-known names as possible, with which production companies approach broadcasters and platforms, especially in the case of “high-end” quality projects, according to several practitioners (e.g. Lippold and Kraus 2019). Rather, packaging in advance is more comprehensively about several processes that span project stages, as Christian Zabel summarises in his economic study of the German TV sector, including “the profitability calculation, the commitment of central creative participants, the securing of financing and, if necessary, the optioning of film rights” (2009, 67, my translation). Valuations can play a role in this packaging, for example with regard to well-known and esteemed creatives. Thus, the relevance of quality attributions inherent to the industry becomes visible once again.

4.2.1 Production Companies and Broadcasters: Interconnections and Overlaps

There is a basic differentiation to be made between broadcaster-independent and broadcaster-dependent production companies, with the highest-revenue companies in Germany belonging primarily to the second type (Mikos 2021, 177). UFA and its section UFA Fiction, for example, belong to the Bertelsmann Group via their parent company Fremantle Media, and are thus intertwined with the RTL Group. Studio Hamburg, whose subsidiary Real Film was responsible for the political drama Die Stadt und die Macht/The City and the Power (ARD/NDR/Degeto, 2016)—another case study used in recruiting interviewees—is a wholly owned subsidiary of ARD’s NDR. In some cases, several programme providers stand behind broadcaster-dependent producers (Hennecke and Rau 2015, 32), exemplified by Bavaria Film, a leading film and television production company based in northeast Munich whose shareholders include ARD’s local broadcasters WDR, SWR, MDR and BR. The picture becomes even more confusing in view of the subsidiaries through which the public broadcasters operate in a market economy and hold stakes in production companies. For example, the commercially operating ZDF subsidiary ZDF Studios (formerly ZDF Enterprises) holds stakes in 18 companies (in 2023; ZDF Studios 2023). Several of these companies have produced quality drama projects: Bavaria Film, for instance, made the series sequel Das Boot and the biopic Freud (Netflix/ORF, 2020), and Network Movie created Morgen hör ich auf/Tomorrow I Quit (ZDF, 2016), a drama significantly influenced by Breaking Bad (AMC, 2008–2013), and the European co-production The Team (ZDF et al. 2015–2018). The media economists Chris Hennecke and Harald Rau (2015, 30–33) criticise the opaqueness of the market when it comes to such interconnected structures, and they contend that essential players in TV production are ultimately still organised and financed under public broadcasting. From their point of view, it must be asked to what extent some television and film production companies profit from the connections. Commentators also voiced similar questions in DWDL.de, specifically in relation to increased production at the ZDF subsidiary Network Movie and its new offshoot Studio Zentral³: independent producers complained about internal agreements between ZDF and Network Movie that left them out (Zarges 2021b).

Against the background of interconnections between broadcasters and production companies, it is doubtful whether—as Laura Glockseisen (2018, 30) claims—the digitalised German TV market has prevailed as an “independent structure” in the German production landscape. Particularly in the case of TV drama series, the tendency she identifies among many smaller productions to address only a limited target group is at best conditionally true. German TV series are, at least traditionally, more geared towards mass compatibility (Sydow and Windeler 2004b, 6) and involve a great deal of effort. Small production companies are more capable of producing individual films than serial projects that may take years to produce. They lack the financial resources to make advance financial contributions and invest in the more complex material development.

However, in the past decade, younger and comparatively small companies have joined the ranks of series production. NeueSuper, for example, a production company founded as recently as 2010 by three graduates of the film school Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film München, has maintained a series focus since the ZDFneo comedy Blockbustaz (2014–2018) and is now mixing it up in the more expensive quality segment with the Sky drama 8 Tage as well as Luden (2023), a drama for Amazon Prime Video about Hamburg’s red-light district St. Pauli in the 1980s. The company btf—bildundtonfabrik, initially associated primarily with programmes by the popular satirist Jan Böhmermann, produces the Netflix teen drama How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast) and the Covid-19 dramedy Drinnen – Im Internet sind alle gleich, a series considered in my interviews (see Krauß 2023a). The political satire Eichwald, MdB, another low-budget series with some clear influence on the interviewed practitioners, comes from Kundschafter Filmproduktion, an independent company created during the development work for the arthouse agent comedy Kundschafter des Friedens/Scouts of Peace (2017). With The Billion Dollar Code (2021), a miniseries about a real-life legal dispute between Google and a small Berlin agency regarding digital art and the online service Google Earth, this production company can now count itself among the ranks of German Netflix producers.

4.2.2 Television Production and Film: Flowing Boundaries

Linked to independent producers’ high commitment to series, the boundaries between television and film—which in Germany are already “amphibiously” connected (Rohrbach 2009, first 1977)—became even more fluid during the period under study. This trend corresponds to similar convergence processes in other European and international markets (Meir 2019, 106) and affects both producers and their products. So-called quality or high-end dramas, which the following subchapter on series types describes in more detail, often comprise only a few episodes. Production companies that until a few years ago clearly specialised in arthouse cinema productions now develop such television series, partly because cinema distribution (even before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic) proved to be increasingly difficult to execute and financially less lucrative (Arndt in Arndt et al. 2017). Examples of such companies considered in this study are X Filme Creative Pool, which in addition to Babylon Berlin produced, among others, the family drama thriller Die verlorene Tochter/The Lost Daughter (ZDF, 2020) and the social-critical comedy Tina mobil/Tina Mobile (ARD/RBB, 2021), as well as 23/5 Filmproduktion, founded by director Hans-Christian Schmid, which produced Das Verschwinden/The Disappearance (ARD et al., 2017). Das Verschwinden’s ambitious genre mix of crime, family and youth drama tells the story of a mother’s search for her missing teenage daughter in the Czech-Bavarian border region; it is incorporated into this production study through interviews with the head writer and two responsible editors from BR. Komplizen Film, founded and co-directed by acclaimed filmmaker Maren Ade, has also entered the series business with the co-production Skylines (2019), a Netflix drama on the Frankfurt hip-hop scene that was cancelled after the first season. Perhaps such companies, which are primarily associated with film and cinema and have some experience in transnationally circulating material (see, for example, the Komplizen production Toni Erdmann, 2016), represent the industry segment that will be able to fulfil the need for artistically ambitious and transnational quality series in Germany?

The connection with the cinema market, which tends to be more transnational, especially in the German arthouse segment, is also indicated in the case of Wiedemann & Berg, if we follow Kosack’s outsider assessment at the 2017 Winterclass. The international success of the Oscar-winning GDR-era drama Das Leben der Anderen/The Lives of Others (2006) helped UFA’s competitor company generate commissions for Netflix series, he argued (2017). Wiedemann & Berg’s TV offshoot, W&B Television, has positioned itself as a central producer in the young pay TV and SVoD series market, from the very first German pay TV drama, Add a Friend, through to Der Pass, and on to Tribes of Europa (2021). A science-fiction dystopia, Tribes of Europa follows three young siblings mixed up in a conflict between different future civilisations and was the second German series production for Netflix, after Dark. Besides Dark, two other case studies used for the study sample come from this production house: the gangster drama 4 Blocks and Mitten in Deutschland: NSU/NSU German History X (ARD et al., 2016), a three-part miniseries presenting the crimes of the radical right-wing terrorist organisation National Socialist Underground in the 2000s from three different perspectives. Previously part of the transnationally operating Endemol Shine Group, W&B Television now belongs to the Munich-based film trading and production group Leonine Holding. Its founders, Quirin Berg and Max Wiedemann, confidently announced in the German industry magazine Blickpunkt:Film that this restructuring would fulfil the dream of a German studio that combines film, distribution, television, licensing and entertainment under one roof (in Müller 2019).

Like the case of Wiedemann & Berg, other semi-studio structures are emerging in Germany’s television industry. Overall, however, this local TV landscape is dominated by medium-sized production companies with limited financial strength. UFA and the independent Constantin Film, which is behind the high-budget drama Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo, provide further examples of houses that combine cinema and television and partly include distribution. The boundaries between production and distribution are also becoming blurred at Beta Film, the distribution company for film and television licences, which now invests in series such as Babylon Berlin and has stakes in several production companies, including Bantry Bay, the production house behind DRUCK and Club der roten Bänder. These occasional tendencies towards a studio system on the part of production companies, however, are countered by developments among commissioners to become producers themselves. The respective sides’ different interests and the various forms of cooperation among them receive detailed attention in Chapter 5, on negotiating financing and distribution issues. But, first, we must attend to another important issue: a brief overview of other actors and institutions in the local television series landscape, which will help us draw as comprehensive a picture of it as possible.

4.2.3 Other Actors: Beyond Production Companies and Programme Providers

In television series production, actors beyond broadcasters, platforms and production companies are sometimes involved, such as film and media funds. In Germany, these state-run institutions have increasingly expanded their activities in the direction of series, specifically co-financing expensive high-end projects with multiple financial backers as well as smaller ones from the up-and-coming low-budget sector (see Mikos 2021, 181–182). This transformation of film funding is happening not least due to similar activities by transnational and European competitors and because the funders fear that larger TV drama productions will migrate to other countries, especially Eastern Europe (Niemeier 2017). Through subsidies, German media policy has a direct impact on the television market, which—as in other countries and in television history—comes with issues of state intervention, regulation and deregulation, as well as national and European political debates. In federally structured Germany, media funding also often intersects with regional issues. Many funding agencies are, after all, assigned to federal states and, when allocating funds, aim strongly at bolstering “local effects” (i.e. economic benefit for the respective region). The federal structure of the television industry—upheld in Germany by, among other things, the union of local public-service broadcasters in the ARD network and by the production companies interwoven with them—is thus perpetuated and intensified. The “diversity in funding policies of the regional film funds” (Appelgren 2018, 278) complicates interconnections in mixed and co-financing (which Chapter 5 looks at in more depth).

In addition to institutions such as funding agencies and broadcasters, individual freelancers have considerable sway on the forms television series production takes. In particular, personnel in the project networks and screen idea work groups who are considered “creatives” tend to be freelancers. Through hiring freelancers, programme providers and production companies outsource risks. This production study takes these freelance actors, especially scriptwriters, into account when analysing the German industry discourse on quality drama.⁴ In Germany, writers, like other freelance television workers, tend to be less formalised and only partially unionised, with little assertiveness, as producer and writer Jörg Winger (2017) reflected in an interview. Seen in this light, many writers belong to the “third labour sector”, which John Thornton Caldwell (2008, 50–51) refers to as the “unregulated film and television related work worlds […] off the lot and out of the studio”.

Individual newcomers often find entry into the industry difficult, as some interview partners critically discussed (e.g. Stuckmann 2016; see also Zabel 2009, 64). Barriers arise from television professionals’ fundamental tendency to make recourse to their personal networks. Assembling project-specific teams usually means using existing contacts. A decisive criterion is whether the team’s “chemistry” is right (so goes the repeated argument at industry workshops). A probable basis for this “chemistry” is previous collaborations, as compared to entirely new relationships. On the other hand, the industry depends on innovation. In the case of efforts to create quality and innovative series, the need for new perspectives is particularly evident (see Krauß 2020b).

Thanks to new entrants and the existence of marginal areas, the German television industry does not represent a completely closed entity that can be conclusively defined. Openings and fluid boundaries are discernible not only in terms of personnel but also in media, institutional, textual and national terms. These fluid boundaries apply all the more to the broad, contemporary concept of television that this work follows and which includes “internet-distributed television services” (Lotz et al. 2018, 42) of various forms. From this point of view, the types of series outlined below are not constant presences but merely central tendencies that assist in describing current series production in Germany.

4.3 Series Types and Production Areas

In terms of its different types of TV drama production, Germany’s television industry is yet again very multifaceted. Writers and other actors involved in screenwriting work across varying production contexts. In some places transnational features emerge, but to a large extent national specifics shape the production areas. Therefore, we cannot speak of one “specific, national production culture” (Redvall 2013, 183), as tends to be the case in smaller and more homogeneous markets such as Denmark. Both in the interview and at industry workshops (Kosack 2017, 2019; Thielen and Kosack 2015), Joachim Kosack distinguished between primarily four types of series and their associated production: the “industrial” daily soap opera; the “weekly” drama; the “local” procedural; and the “high-end” drama. These four categories are strongly influenced by the structures and focuses of UFA. That company’s fiction efforts subdivide into UFA Serial Drama, where “industrially produced” daily soaps dominate, and UFA Fiction, responsible for other series as well as television and cinema films (Krauß 2019, 70–71). In this respect, Kosack’s categorisation depicts Germany’s overall series production to only a limited extent, but it at least represents a first starting point to summarise central tendencies.

4.3.1 Industrial, Weekly, Local and High-End Series

According to Kosack (2019), series with around 250 episodes per year fall under the “industrial” type. We are therefore talking about daily soaps, such as the long-running Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten/Good Times, Bad Times (RTL, 1992–), and telenovelas—or more precisely their German variant, created in the early 2000s with a strong focus on long runs (Weber 2013, 280–281). Sturm der Liebe/Storm of Love (ARD, 2005–) is a famous and economically very successful example, as this romantic telenovela about relationships in the fictional Bavarian hotel Fürstenhof was sold to more than 20 foreign broadcasters. As mentioned in other interview partners’ statements (e.g. Leibfried 2016) and in German how-to books on writing TV drama (e.g. Feil 2006, 245), the industrial series has clear divisions of labour and precisely defined production methods (Knöhr 2018, 34–35), including a collaborative pool of authors (thus approaching the writers’ room model).

Kosack (2019) also described how the “weekly” series operates its production process, with 25–50 episodes produced and broadcast annually. For the better part of the year (even if each season has only 25 episodes) most of the team—including the writers and supervising or executive producers, heads of production and so on—works only on this series. Kosack cited the example of the various local spin-offs of the SOKO police procedural (ZDF/ORF, 1978–; e.g. SOKO Leipzig/Leipzig Homicide, ZDF, 2001–, see Fig. 4.5). Other weekly series, such as Notruf Hafenkante/SOS Hafenkante (ZDF 2007–), also belong to the crime procedural genre, which is generally very present in German and especially public-service fiction (Maurer et al. 2020, 261). The medical drama is another common weekly; see, in particular, the long-standing In aller Freundschaft/In All Friendship (ARD/MDR, 1998–) and its spin-off In aller Freundschaft – Die jungen Ärzte/In All Friendship—The Young Doctors (ARD/MDR, 2015–).⁵ Both weekly crime and medical dramas are procedural, with a self-contained plot in each episode, while other weekly series, such as the now discontinued Lindenstraße/Linden Street (ARD/WDR, 1985–2020)—a kind of German Coronation Street (ITV, UK 1960–)—skew more towards a soap opera format, with cross-episode storylines. The dramaturgical tendency towards self-contained episodes implies a certain style of script work, where writers develop scripts separately for individual episodes featuring individual cases.⁶ In production, the weekly also differs from the industrial daily soap opera in that the producer has more influence on the individual books, according to an industry workshop lecture by Kosack and Barbara Thielen (2015), the managing director of the production company Ziegler Film Köln and former head of fiction at RTL.

Fig. 4.5

(© ZDF/Sandra Ludewig)

The crime procedural SOKO Leipzig/Leipzig Homicide

The third type, the “local” series, has approximately 13 episodes produced and broadcast annually, a focus on specific broadcast slots and an episode budget between 500,000 and 750,000 euros. For this format, the producer is the exclusive “driver”, possibly “collaborating with a head writer”, as Kosack and Thielen (2015) summarised. In the local series stream, procedural dramaturgy and the crime genre are again formative. The examples Beck Is Back! (RTL, 2018–19) and Sankt Maik, which Kosack mentioned regarding this series segment during the interview, were each relatively short-lived due to unsatisfactory ratings for RTL’s prime-time slot. Other local series, however—especially in the crime genre—have run for several years, if not decades. Großstadtrevier/Big City Police Station (ARD/NDR, 1986–), a police procedural set in Hamburg, for example, reached its 36th season in 2023. Um Himmels Willen/For Heaven’s Sake (ARD/MDR, 2002–2021), a light comedy about a group of nuns that in 2012 was the most-watched German television series, with more than seven million viewers (Mantel 2012), ran for almost 20 years.

According to Kosack (2019), the goal for local series is to produce them for many years, “season after season with a certain regularity”, and keep them on the market as long as possible. The economic attractiveness and relevance of long-running local series as well as weekly and daily soaps for production companies is obvious. In our interview, producer and writer Gabriela Sperl (2018) spoke of “cash cows”; other practitioners (e.g. Kromschröder 2018) used the common term “bread-and-butter” series.

In Kosack’s (2019) assessment, the fourth type—the “high-end” drama—leads to greater risk for the producer because of increased effort towards script development, lower predictability (compared to procedurals for established broadcast slots) and decreased longevity. High-end productions primarily take the form of miniseries, developed out of the tradition of so-called event television (Cooke 2016). These dramas of mostly two or three 90-minute episodes usually deal with twentieth-century German history, especially the Second World War and National Socialism. However, according to Kosack (2018), the potential for continuation and more episodes is increasingly important in the high-end or event sector. Given the mass of cultural objects in today’s society of singularities (Reckwitz 2020), brands must establish themselves in order to become visible among the different streaming content, as was done, for example, with Charité (ARD/MDR, 2017–), an event miniseries portraying the famous Berlin hospital in different eras.

Kosack furthermore linked the high-end segment with tendencies towards the “showrunner”, a hybrid writer-producer whose gradual adoption in the German television industry is effecting changes among the project network and screen idea work group and the collaboration therein.⁷ Following Kosack’s model for different series types and production areas, we can say that the roles of producer and writer are generally decisive criteria for categorising television series in Germany. Combined with producers’ and head writers’ influence and the working methods of these professions, the various types of series oscillate between “assembly line” and labour division versus more individual and artistic work (see Schmid 2016, 51, 187). With Andreas Reckwitz (2020), we can distinguish between standardisation and singularisation. The budgets differ between these two poles and tend to increase from the quickly produced, “industrial” soap opera to the ambitious “high-end” segment. The classification becomes more complex, however, when we consider gaps in Kosack’s categorisation as well as border areas and overlaps.

4.3.2 Classifying the Quality Drama

The “quality” drama, as discussed and pursued in the German television series landscape, goes hand in hand with higher budgets—following the tendency, found in media economic analyses, to equate quality with high production costs (Hoskins and Mirus 1988, 502). Obviously, development and production conditions differ according to budget. In the case of the comparatively high-budget drama Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo, which head writer Annette Hess (2019) distinguished from the “daily business”, the shoot for eight episodes is said to have taken 130 days (according to information shared at the 2020 Berlinale Series Market [Berben et al. 2020], which surely also serves marketing purposes). In the industrial daily soap process, on the other hand, a complete 20- or 45-minute episode is shot in only one day (Kirsch 2001, 47).

Cost-intensive series projects usually have a higher degree of transnationalisation, because foreign sales and co-financing with foreign partners play a more important role. In our interview, Kosack (2019) elaborated on the “high-end” drama: “It’s almost always about how you then work with the world distribution money or with distribution to the world at all”. However, in the case of some projects discussed or planned as quality or high-end content—such as ARD’s political drama Die Stadt und die Macht—foreign sales were hardly relevant or occurred only at a very late stage. Some productions even originate from decidedly regional contexts, such as the aforementioned Bavarian dramedy Hindafing. Announcements that foreign sales were not planned—as by Jörg Winger (2019) regarding Deutschland 83—should be treated with caution, as they correspond to the tendency described by Caldwell (2008, 15) that many television and film makers describe their own actions as “unintentional”. Transnational circulation, thus mediated, appears less related to existing structures or an overarching strategy than to a series’ specific content, one’s own skills, supposed coincidences or personal connections. Indeed, these individualised aspects also play an important role: after all, the television industry is strongly characterised by personal networks and project-specific gatherings. But foreign sales also require favourable structural framework conditions to get off the ground.

A look at individual projects leads to a more complex picture of quality TV dramas from Germany and reveals the boundaries of Kosack’s four series categories as well as overlaps between them. For example, some supposedly quality productions have budgets barely above those of more “regular” and mainstream local series, such as the first season of 4 Blocks. Heavily shot on location, its cost per episode is said to have been just under 700,000 euros (Greifeneder 2017; Mikos 2021, 186). Furthermore, production companies and freelancers often oscillate between the different series terrains, for economic reasons alone. For many of these actors, the “bread-and-butter” shows produced over years are economically more important and lucrative. Such productions often provide a longer-term, predictable source of income for production companies, offering security to invest money and time in more cost-intensive and riskier quality projects with fewer episodes. At the same time, some professionals in the high-end segment also draw boundaries around lower-budget or more industrially produced series and can exclude those practitioners associated with them. “It is very difficult to rescue people from pigeonholes in Germany—it is practically impossible”, Liane Jessen (2019), who at the time of the interview was still head of the fiction department at ARD’s HR branch, problematised this issue.

However, actors in the supposed “non-quality category” (Weber 2019, 241, my translation)—which is easily forgotten in discussions on quality TV—also strive to tell more “complex” stories with cross-episode storylines (see Knöhr 2018, 32–33). The daily soap and weekly segments in particular offer many practitioners a field of experimentation regarding ongoing dramatic continuity and act as entry points into the industry. In general, a turn towards serials, and partly away from single films, has been in process for some years, especially among departments and production areas promoting young talents. This newcomer terrain is left out of Kosack’s model, perhaps due to a lack of economic relevance for mainstream producers such as him. TV dramas by emerging talents—such as Eichwald, MdB, from the ZDF editorial department Das kleine Fernsehspiel, and Servus Baby/Hello Baby (2018–), from BR—usually have very few episodes and are often considered underfinanced. However, experiments in content, form and production emerge particularly in the area of newcomer or low-budget productions and web series that involve semi-professional actors, and thus expand the television industry (see Kuhn 2016).

A prime example of the emerging field’s experimentation is the transmedia youth drama DRUCK (Fig. 4.6) by Funk and ZDF, where the ongoing “real-time” distribution of individual scenes and sequences on different platforms required a very rapid working method. Through such novel mechanisms, according to the producer Lasse Scharpen (2019), the lean structures typical of low-budget arthouse films provide an important influence (see also Krauß 2020c, 279–280; Krauß and Stock 2021). Practitioners’ commonly held view that experiments take place in marginal areas and in low-budget productions (e.g. interview with Leibfried 2016) must also be approached critically. Such arguments can gloss over or conceal problematic production conditions. Often, references to one’s “‘boot camp’ experience” (Caldwell 2008, 42) in “artistic” projects outside the mainstream aim to portray the speaker as a particularly innovative, risk-taking and experimental individual.

Fig. 4.6

(© ZDF/Richard Kranzin)

A transmedia youth drama with “real-time” distribution—the German SKAM adaptation DRUCK.

Certain overlaps also exist between newcomers to the industry and high-end dramas: junior creatives are often involved in the latter, and especially in collaborative script development in the writers’ room.⁸ New programme providers in particular recruit young talent to develop concepts and scripts for TV dramas and as personnel; see, for example, the Netflix hip-hop drama Skylines, where the “showrunner” (Schultze 2019) was the inexperienced Dennis Schanz, a graduate of the series-specific training programme Serial Eyes at the DFFB – Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin (German Film and Television Academy Berlin). TV series by young talent do not always fall under the “high-end” category—but equally not under “industrial”, “weekly” or “local”, either. Rather, we can observe a turn specifically towards serial teen TV dramas. This further series segment, which falls outside Kosack’s series grid, is relevant to the analysed industry discourse on quality TV because the pressure to produce “better” or “different” series often goes hand in hand with the goal of rejuvenation (Redvall 2013, 79). “[P]ublic-service television is becoming increasingly conscious of the need to match the standards of imported series, and of the demands of its media-savvy younger viewers”, attest Eva Pjajčíková and Petr Szczepanik (2016, 118), specifically regarding public broadcasters (see also Eichner and Esser 2020, 191).

Quality drama projects involving young talent and that have manageable budgets also populate the documentary genre. Examples in the period under study that draw on the central (but by no means new) genre of true crime (e.g. Murley 2008, 109–132) include Höllental/Hell Valley (ZDF, 2020), about the still unsolved murder of nine-year-old Peggy Knobloch, and Rohwedder – Einigkeit und Mord und Freiheit/A Perfect Crime (Netflix 2020), looking at the 1991 assassination of the president of the Treuhandanstalt (an agency established by the GDR government to (re)privatise East German enterprises). The streaming provider Amazon Prime Video also has many documentaries among its German original productions, such as Unzensiert – Bushido’s Wahrheit/Uncensored—Bushido’s Truth (2021), about the well-known, controversial German rapper. With German Crime Story—Gefesselt/German Crime Story: Deadlock (2023), Amazon also released a fictionalised true-crime production from Germany.

Another gap in Kosack’s categorisation is the scripted reality genre, which Daniel Klug and Klaus Neumann-Braun (2016, 7, my translation) describe as an “ambivalent phenomenon of German-language entertainment television”, which peculiarly blurs the usual genre boundaries between entertainment and informative content, fiction and non-fiction. Scripted reality formats—such as BerlinTag & Nacht/Berlin—Day & Night (RTL II, 2001–)—represent another type of series in Germany’s industry and overlap not only with standard reality TV shows but also with the industrial daily soap opera, in terms of both broadcasting rhythm and, to some extent, production, storytelling and distribution. In industry discourse on so-called quality TV, as in the observed industry workshops, scripted reality is largely negated or at best addressed as a counterpart: as “trash” at the lower end of the rating scale (Frizzoni 2014). In the case of Bantry Bay’s youth series DRUCK, which strongly orientates towards authenticity, the comparatively elaborate casting process (among other things) used a database of actors from Seapoint, Bantry Bay’s sister company that specialises in non-fiction formats and scripted reality (see Krauß and Stock 2021, 421). Similar strategies to achieve a more diverse and less “ordinary” cast and, if desired, to include up-and-coming talent or amateurs, including from historically underserved demographic groups, can generally find purchase in quality drama projects. After all, it is precisely such programmes that producers often associate with “realism”, research and elaborate casting.

4.3.3 Television Hybrids: Between Film and Series

Yet another segment relevant to the industry discourse on German quality dramas and their production is television films as well as hybrids between these and series. Important series, in the broader sense, which still display strong links to single TV films, are the multi-part films—so-called Mehrteiler—that usually consist of two or three 90-minute episodes. The Mehrteiler currently forms an independent category at the German Television Awards, separate from “Best Drama Series” and “Best Comedy Series” (Deutscher Fernsehpreis 2023, my translation). The prevalence of the 90-minute format in German TV fiction also manifests in the so-called Reihe, a kind of procedural with feature-length episodes. These series consist of largely independent television plays, usually held together only by genre, a common title and a few lead characters. Particularly well-known and traditional examples are the popular Tatort/Crime Scene (ARD/ORF/SRF, 1970–) and the related detective series Polizeiruf 110/Police Call 110 (1971–), which originated in the state television of the GDR, DFF – Deutscher Fernsehfunk (German Television Broadcasting), and was integrated nationwide through ARD and in Austria by the cooperating ORF – Österreichischer Rundfunk (Austrian Broadcasting) from 1990 onwards. Episodes of both Tatort and Polizeiruf 110 tend to be made as individual films, with production entities—consisting of scriptwriters, directors, producers and production companies—changing each time. Often, only supervising editors and their editorial teams ensure continuity across the series. Through this structure that includes several local broadcasters, each with editorial oversight over its local teams of detectives (as regular Tatort protagonists), the federalism of the public ARD network is inscribed in both shows’ production and text. “Tatort […] is not a series in the conventional sense”, conclude Christian Hißnauer, Stefan Scherer and Claudia Stockinger (2014a, 9–10, my translation) in view of this regional breakdown. However, basic features of serial storytelling characterise Tatort and Polizeiruf 110, especially “the linking of the individual segments through recurring characters at specific locations”.

More generally, overlaps between the TV film and TV series become visible when multi-part “event miniseries” or Mehrteiler are presented in 45-minute instead of 90-minute episodes outside the German-speaking region, as in the case of Ku’damm 56/59/63 (ZDF, 2015–2021), or when series become pressed into the single 90-minute-film form in their later seasons, as happened with the German-Austrian medical drama Der Bergdoktor/The Mountain Doctor (ZDF/ORF, 2008–), a reboot of the 1990s series of the same name (Sat.1, 1992–1997). The adaptation to linear structures plays an important role here. Distribution patterns and broadcast slots generally have had a decisive influence on series and television films from Germany and therefore require closer examination.

4.3.4 Broadcast Slots and Linear Structures

Broadcast slots still determine, to a great extent, structures of Germany’s television series landscape, including series types, production contexts and screenwriting guidelines. If one draws on actor-network theory (e.g. Latour 1996; and with a focus on television, Teurlings 2013)—and not only the approaches of the project network or screen idea work group, which this work centres—broadcast slots can be understood as a kind of actor whose significance has developed over the course of television history and that continues to transform itself in interaction with other practices and processes of the industry. Broadcast slots form an object around which practices of screenwriting, including the associated training and evaluation of scripts and pitch papers, came to orientate themselves (as I myself was able to experience in internships and workshops). Broadcast slots have also decisively structured genres, tonalities and content.⁹

In the period under investigation—since 2015—a certain decoupling from place-based broadcasting distribution and financing is most definitely apparent. As a result, script development’s orientation to broadcast slots has also weakened, as several interview statements concretised. But linear broadcasting continues to play an important role in terms of distribution and reception patterns. According to quantitative studies from 2019, television use at the immediate time of broadcast still dominates (Frees et al. 2019, 314–315, 317). Even more recent figures, however, show that non-linear use continues to rise (Hess and Müller 2022, 414; Rhody 2022). The 50+ age group, which is strongly represented in the overall German population, still watches (according to quantitative numbers from 2022) at least three-quarters of the time via “the current television programme” (Hess and Müller 2022, 419, my translation). The linear TV programme thus still has an extremely large and stable number of regular users in Germany.

The interviewed and observed TV professionals also repeatedly referred to broadcast slots, especially at the beginning of my research. It remains important to consider these slots, because they represent central, fundamental structures in and indicate the quantity of German television fiction. The need to fill the various slots links to Germany’s very high number of productions compared to most other European countries.

When it comes to quality TV series from Germany, their commissioners have often remade or at least explored existing broadcasting schemes. The miniseries Das Verschwinden, for example, ran on a few Sundays when the political talk show Anne Will (ARD/NDR, 2007–2023) was on hiatus in the summer, and thus rerouted the well-worn paths of public-service drama programming. Individual broadcast slots can have their own tensions as well—such as when Weissensee/The Weissensee Saga (ARD/MDR/Degeto, 2010–2018), a period drama following two families in East Berlin between 1980 and 1990, was broadcast in the Tuesday night slot of ARD’s national channel Das Erste instead of a lighter series with simple dramaturgy (i.e. self-contained episodes), such as the nun comedy Um Himmels Willen.

Drama production in Germany’s television landscape generally displays heterogeneity and tensions, as this chapter has outlined. In addition to the poles of linear broadcasting versus event programming and online distribution, Germany’s TV fiction landscape is characterised by different production methods and budgets, varying degrees of transnationality and locality, the multitude of commissioners and their networks, and the various production companies. The industry’s diverse actors should not be regarded as entities that exist entirely separate from one another; rather—especially in the case of broadcasters and production companies that cooperate on the basis of projects—interconnections and networks are always at play. The following chapter looks specifically at economic network formations and outlines how the observed and interviewed television practitioners negotiated these aspects in their industry discourse on German quality drama.

Notes

• 1. I use the term “original” to refer to productions that a broadcaster or platform has commissioned and largely co-financed. Series purchased later are not originals, even though some programme providers, notably Netflix, label them as such.

• 2. Probably from 2025, after HBO’s licence agreement with Sky Deutschland expires.

• 3. Studio Zentral was founded in 2020 and, since then, has produced, among others, the ambitious relationship drama WIR/WE (ZDFneo, 2021–), the preteen series ECHT/Real (ZDF, 2021–) and the mystery anthology drama Die nettesten Menschen der Welt/The Nicest People on Earth (ARD/BR/Degeto 2023).

• 4. Chapter 8 explores writers’ work and their interactions with other production members in the context of debates on production and screenwriting cultures.

• 5. Yet another spin-off, In aller Freundschaft – Die Krankenschwestern/In All Friendship—The Nurses (ARD/MDR, 2018–), has fewer than ten episodes per season and thus does not qualify as a weekly drama, according to Kosack’s definition.

• 6. For further discussion on this long-standing tendency in screenwriting in Germany, see Chapter 8.

• 7. Chapter 8 offers a detailed discussion on the showrunner in the German TV industry.

• 8. For discussion on the writers’ room in the German TV industry, see Chapter 8.

• 9. Chapter 7, examining the industry’s content-aesthetic debates on German TV drama, explains these impacts in relation to broadcast slots in more detail.