Contents and Forms of German TV Drama: Aesthetic and Narrative Styles and Criticisms

Abstract

This chapter explores how the television professionals discussed the state of German television fiction, including its contents and forms. The chapter first describes how the TV creators, on the basis of their estimations of quality TV, critically dealt with current television fiction from Germany. The comparison with production from other countries also played a role. The chapter’s second part looks more closely at the practitioners’ criticism of contemporary quality drama projects from Germany. Finally, the third part shows how the producers dealt with German television history in this engagement with quality TV fiction. Their statements not only revealed the impression of a “golden age” in the recent past, with very different and increased distribution and licencing opportunities; they also reflected on the numerous reasons why quality drama faced difficult conditions in gaining ground in German television. Here, the chapter indicates how production cultures historically evolved within institutions.

“It’s just cobbled together like that. Cut, counter-cut. No staging ideas and so on”, said Richard Kropf, co-writer of 4 Blocks (TNT Serie2017–2019) and Kleo (Netflix 2022), when comparing German series to US ones, which, by contrast, had a “completely unique look” (in Hackfort, Konrad and Kropf 2018). The other practitioners likewise negotiated contents and forms of German TV drama by critically comparing it with transnational or European quality TV and their ideas of what such series should look like. Their frequent focus on contents and forms of TV corresponds to the facet of screenwriting research that deals with storytelling and dramatic composition, and furthermore to Eva Novrup Redvall’s “screen idea system” model (2013, 21), which builds on the approach of the “screen idea work group” (Macdonald 2010). Redvall’s model accounts for not only creatives and institutionally involved gatekeepers but also existing television and film texts as central forces in script development. The researched producers, writers, directors and commissioning editors discussed the state of German television fiction on the basis of textual “trends, tastes and traditions” (Redvall 2013, 31) and drew on foreign productions for comparison.

7.1 Current Television Fiction from Germany

When the practitioners discussed German TV fiction, they were more strongly influenced by their personal experiences within the local industry than when negotiating foreign productions.¹ Therefore, their statements on the state of German TV drama must be considered against the background of this involvement in local personnel networks. To put it another way: To what extent were the TV professionals willing or able to comment on the work of colleagues? Who said what about whom and in what form could potentially be related to past and future collaborations. Evaluating content and narration also happened against this context of project networks, since the reputation of both production companies and individuals can determine their recruitment (Fröhlich 2007, 41). Thus, it is hardly surprising that the television creators tended to use diplomatic expressions and to emphasise the quality of local fiction: “It is imperative that I defend what we provide and offer in terms of quality every week”, stated, for example, Martina Zöllner (2018), programme head of RBB, one of ARD’s local broadcasters, and then head of fiction and documentary for RBB in respect to ARD’s TV films and series. Practitioners in other positions, on the other hand, more forcefully criticised TV dramas from Germany, presumably to set their work apart from “all these conventional series” (Hess 2019) and TV films and to portray themselves as more innovative and courageous. One recurring criticism of content and narration—and which, at the same time, addressed processes of script development—was German TV series’ stereotyped characters and formulaic narratives.

7.1.1 Formulas and Formats

Many practitioners classified German television fiction, and especially series, as too formulaic, formatted and monotonous. This corresponds to Andreas Reckwitz’s diagnosis that, in the “creativity dispositif” of contemporary society (2017, 8), many complain about too little newness despite an abundance of aesthetic objects (2013, 30). The development producer Gunther Eschke (2015), for example, attributed a “consonance” to German series (in comparison with contemporary US ones, in the early context of 2015), by which he meant: “You kind of think, ‘Yes, of course, it goes exactly like that’. It doesn’t get you going”. In connection with this supposed monotony, TV professionals additionally criticised aesthetic deficits. For instance, in reference to ZDF’s fiction programming, and specifically the medical procedural Der Bergdoktor/The Mountain Doctor (ZDF/ORF 2008–), commissioning editor Liane Jessen (2019) grumbled: “It’s bad editing, it’s bad lighting, it’s terrible music, it’s a loveless camera”. According to her, the formulaic nature continues with casting in most German series: “Pre-evening actors are always in the pre-evening section, crime actors are always in the crime section”. Recurring castings likely arise from the German television industry’s comparative smallness and, in terms of quality series projects, its limited pool of “top people” (Zöllner 2018). According to Jessen (2019), however, it is also crucial to make decisions with such “pigeonholes” in mind.

These pigeonholes include, among other things, broadcast slots: “I see something and immediately know: Aha, that’s on Fridays, that’s on Thursdays”, stated Jessen (2019), thus addressing formatting along linear structures, just as Knut Hickethier (1998, 527) observed them on German television in the 1990s. According to him, this decade saw the onset of the “standardisation” of programmes. The interviewed and observed practitioners in the more recent past still regarded broadcast slots as a decisive restriction shaping screenwriting and storytelling. The producer and writer Gabriela Sperl (2018), for example, emphasised: “You have no idea how tight this restriction is”. The screenwriter Kropf (in Hackfort, Konrad and Kropf 2018) cited the “so-called Thursday evening T-shirt” as an example of these strict formulas: “at a private broadcaster”, due to market research results, the male hero had to wear long-sleeve button-down shirts. Very likely, Kropf was describing the commercial broadcaster RTL, which commissioned several series, mostly procedurals, with such male protagonists, including the school dramedy Der Lehrer/The Teacher (2009, 2013–2021) and the action thriller Alarm für Cobra 11—Die Autobahnpolizei / Alarm for Cobra 11—The Highway Police (1996–).

In addition to such concrete ingredients, broadcasters often seek a certain tonality for their individual schedules. Hauke Bartel (2017) explained, at the Winterclass Serial Writing and Producing industry workshop, that the commercial broadcaster Vox (of which he was then head of fiction) wants a “positive human image” in its original series rather than stories where the main characters are in a perpetual downward spiral. A happy ending is not mandatory, but the catharsis of the main character is crucial, he concluded. An orientation towards a certain lightness and cheerfulness seems to have shaped German television fiction overall, as the later Sect. 7.3 tracing the industry’s historical perspectives on German quality drama makes clear once again.

The formulaic nature of German TV fiction can generally be linked to its past, since crucial structures and characteristics of TV films and series have developed over many years. In this context, the practitioners repeatedly addressed the lopsided socialisation of their industry and the audience, which ultimately prevented or hindered quality serials. The screenwriter Hanno Hackfort (in Hackfort, Konrad and Kropf 2018), for example, complained about a “desert of recipients” resulting from the uniformity of broadcast programmes, and the director Achim von Borries (2019) problematised “cultivated” viewers who watch TV drama even if it is “uninteresting”. These statements are united by the idea that the television industry “moulds” the audience, at least to a large extent.

According to Hackfort’s colleague Kropf (in Hackfort, Konrad and Kropf 2018), however, the broadcasters and their editors have repeatedly used simplistic audience concepts to justify the formulaicness through supposed viewer preferences:

When we talk to these broadcasters, […] there are sentences like: “This is for Thursday evening; Friday is almost the weekend. And the viewer has to be released with a good feeling”. Something like that […] is insanely constricting.

This description suggests that formatting and formulaicness are not only visible in content but also shape screenwriting and production processes.

Discussions on the formulaic nature of TV fiction also focused on the side of reception. Practitioners critically addressed audience ratings as an elementary measure of success that usually conflicts with budgetary and content criteria (see Windeler et al. 2001, 111). According to the television professionals, over time the prioritisation of quantitative audience ratings “spilled over” to the public broadcasters (Rauhaus 2016). Thus, quantitative viewing figures became a central and today remain a highly relevant, control variable throughout the industry. The endeavour to reach a “mass audience” (Hess 2019) or at least a very broad target group, which has shaped the industry for years and often continues to do so, seems to have significantly pushed this reliance on formulas, “brands” and stereotypes. The scriptwriter Annette Hess (2019) diagnosed that, against such a background, characters often have to be very quickly recognisable: “The evil brother-in-law […] the cautious flower seller”, so that the viewers can immediately go, “Oh yeah, I know that one”.

The crime genre’s ubiquitousness in German TV fiction has also been repeatedly attributed to the perceived fixation on quantitative audience ratings.

7.1.2 The Omnipresent Crime Genre

The practitioners’ debates on the strict formulas and formats of German TV drama repeatedly returned to the crime genre. As a result of the industry’s perceived focus on crime fiction, several TV professionals on the one hand lamented a dearth of other genres, which other markets allegedly have; on the other hand, they often considered crime fiction to be “neutral” (Henke 2018) or a form in which “pretty much anything you want can be told” (Steinwender in Simionescu and Steinwender 2018):

International crime literature or the international crime novel has long since broken away from conventional strategies. There are also crime stories that have no murder at all, but people have only imagined one. Or someone would like to commit murder, but doesn’t. There are all kinds of variations. (Jessen 2019)

This is how Liane Jessen, then head of fiction at HR within the ARD network, summarised the potential conversations on the crime genre that could have been had in the central meetings on the popular Tatort/Crime Scene franchise (ARD/ORF/SRF 1970–), but, according to her, were not.² If we follow the corresponding arguments, it is less a question of how many crime shows are produced than of variation. Many of Germany’s productions stamped as “quality TV drama”—such as 4 Blocks, Babylon Berlin (ARD/Degeto/Sky Deutschland 2017–), Das Geheimnis des Totenwalds/Dark Woods (ARD/NDR/Degeto 2020) and, from more than 10 years ago, Im Angesicht des Verbrechens/In the Face of Crime (ARD et al. 2010) and KDD—Kriminaldauerdienst / KDD – Berlin Crime Squad (ZDF 2007–2010)—feature crime elements, as several interviewees noted. Different, experimental or even quality aspects have often been identified in the series’ multiple and serial storylines, which distinguish them from more simplistic crime procedurals with one case per episode (see Rothemund 2011). Those who worked on the mafia drama 4 Blocks also described the shift in perspective there—away from the police investigators and towards the criminal, migrant family clans—as breaking from German TV fiction conventions. Anke Greifeneder, head of production at WarnerMedia’s German pay TV channels, is said to have suggested this narrative perspective. “With 4 Blocks it was also a trigger to give airtime to characters that you don’t usually see or, at most, sometimes in Tatort when they are brought before the judge”, she argued retrospectively in an interview with the trade magazine Blickpunkt Film (Greifender in Heine 2021, my translation).

At the 2017 Winterclass industry workshop, Greifeneder (2017) emphasised, similar to in her public interviews (e.g. Ströbele 2017), the desire to not fall into a repetitive loop that otherwise characterises German television, with its “German angst”. Beyond again delineating supposedly typical German characteristics, what’s striking here is Greifeneder’s deliberate attempts to differentiate her work from more “ordinary”, formulaic television fiction, self-attributing a quality of innovation, in the sense of the new (see Krauß 2020b, 140, 143). “Is it something new, innovative, fresh?” is how Christian Honeck (2018), the editor co-responsible for 4 Blocks and now head of fiction for Disney+ Germany, described a basic selection criterion for German series commissioned by TNT Serie and TNT Comedy (now WarnerTV Serie and WarnerTV Comedy). At the same time, after the three successful seasons of 4 Blocks, the advertisements for Para—Wir sind King / Para—We Are King (TNT Serie 2021), a coming-of-age drama about four girls in Wedding, one of the poorest and most ethnically diverse areas of Berlin, boasted: “from the creators of 4 Blocks”. With clear parallels in environment and plot, Para represents a kind of younger, more female version of 4 Blocks. In 2023, Warner Comedy released the mockumentary series German Genius (2023), in which Kida Khodr Ramadan, playing himself, tries to step away from his famous lead role as Ali “Toni” Hamad in 4 Blocks to create a German version of the star-packed sitcom Extras (HBO2005–2007), with Ramadan as the German counterpart to the British comedian Ricky Gervais. These examples clearly show that certain types of repetitions, if not formulaic ones, are emerging on the TNT/Warner channels too, just as they do on other more established and more mainstream broadcasters.

7.1.3 Character Formulation

Another recurring topic of discussion, alongside the formulaic nature of German TV drama, was the formulation of characters, which, as already explained, the practitioners regarded as central components of quality dramas. According to Hess (2019), recourse to formulas and conventions—in the sense of popular, familiar ingredients—can be quite constructive in character formulation, to activate viewers’ existing “empathy” through “recognisability” and, from there, to “take them on a journey”. The first step of screenwriting, according to her, is “setting oneself up to be as popular as possible”. Only after achieving that is it a good idea to add “relevant content” and “become a bit more artistic”, by which she, as a screenwriter, presumably meant experiments in the story, including its characters. Hess further explained the notion of starting with basic stock characters through the example of characters in two series that she primarily wrote. In the three-part Ku’damm 56 (ZDF 2015, see Fig. 7.1), we have the protagonist Monika Schöllack, who, unlike her two sisters, does not conform to the normative ideas of her conservative mother; the mother is the “evil stepmother” and the disappointing daughter the “Cinderella” (“Aschenbrödel”). Then we have Weissensee/The Weissensee Saga (ARD/MDR/Degeto 2010–2018), which, according to Hess, builds on the Romeo and Juliet story: in it, Martin Kupfer and Julia Hausmann, the offspring of two very contrasting, intertwined families in East Berlin, fall in love. In Hess’s process, it is then necessary to break the character stereotypes in a second step. However, she criticised, there is often a lack of desire or willingness to do this among television practitioners in Germany. As with Hess, other professionals’ negotiations regarding the deficits in German television fiction related in particular to character formulation.

Fig. 7.1

A “Cinderella” who does not conform to normative ideas—Monika Schöllack (Sonja Gerhardt, with raised hand) in the period drama Ku’damm 56. ©ZDF/[m] KNSK Werbeagentur GmbH (Photo Tobias Schult)

This focus on characters arose from the basic assumption that one of quality drama’s special attributes is multi-layered characters who fascinate viewers and keep them interested. Frank Jastfelder (2018a) from Sky Deutschland classified “character-centricity” as an “essential distinguishing feature” of pay TV fiction compared to “free TV”. Linear broadcasters’ aforementioned aversion to ongoing serials and their favouritism of procedurals may be a crucial reason why German TV fiction—as repeatedly diagnosed—has lacked more profound or complex character formulation. John Yorke (2013, 62) deals with the connection between series structure and character in more detail in Into the Woods (a mixture of a screenwriting guide and dramaturgical analysis): “They may not change inside – their knowledge of a situation changes instead”, he notes about protagonists in episodic series, continuing: “Rather than a flaw, these characters have a deficiency of knowledge, which improves as the story progresses”. Crime procedurals exemplify this mode, as they traditionally hinge on investigators gaining knowledge of their respective cases. In Germany, and especially in public-television fiction, such episodic crime series continue to be extremely prevalent, not least through hybrids of television films and series, such as 90-minute crime productions that are roughly linked together.

Gebhard Henke (2018), at the time of the interview still programme director at WDR, dealt, in his role as coordinator for Tatort, with the well-known series’ character development and serial storylines. On the part of the creatives, the desire to tell “horizontal” stories across different Tatort episodes is definitely present, Henke stated. Indeed, the series’ 90-minute films feature attempts to link cases and, where narratively possible, to have different local investigators appear across episodes, for example, in the double episode Tatort: In der Familie / Crime Scene: Inside the Family (ARD/WDR/BR 2020; after Henke’s time). According to Henke, such approaches to ongoing dramatic continuity in Tatort often lead to problems. Sometimes, a year can pass between episodes featuring the same investigator, so that viewers at best can only vaguely remember the earlier film. As of 2023, the roster includes more than 20 teams of investigators, each of which usually looks into one case per episode in their respective cities; it can indeed take quite a long time until the next episode featuring them is broadcast.³

The corresponding structure of dramaturgy and distribution, which also shapes other German crime procedurals with 90-minute episodes, has potentially made it difficult to develop characters more profoundly. Jessen (2019), who produced several Tatort films at HR, including the multi-award-winning, comparatively experimental Im Schmerz geboren/Born in Pain (ARD/HR 2014), complained—far beyond the Tatort format—about a tendency towards plot-driven and theme-focused storytelling in the submitted scripts and treatments that she reviews:

Afghanistan returnees, incest, genetic engineering, Alzheimer’s, hazardous waste so-and-so – that doesn’t interest me at all! That can be the carrier subject, so to speak. To that I say: Okay, I’ll tell an interpersonal story and use hazardous waste for that. But the hazardous waste cannot be the actual content. […] What interests me is: How does evil come into being and what guise does it take on?

Individual writers, on the other hand, complained that producers often demand dramatic plot twists instead of giving space for more detailed character sketches. “Can’t we build a destroy-the-world button into this season somewhere here?” was the feedback, according to Richard Kropf (in Hackfort, Konrad and Kropf 2018), on a concept for a drama serial with ongoing continuity that he, Hanno Hackfort and Bob Konrad developed around 2008. According to him, many German producers’ need for a flashy start and “big drama” prevents “a lot of stories that could be told” from getting the green light.

Kropf also problematised the recurring feedback from broadcasters that their viewers “like it black and white” when it comes to characters. Although the discussion on the “brokenness of characters”, according to Bernhard Gleim (2016), former commissioning editor at NDR (a member of the ARD consortium), was already happening in public broadcasters’ editorial offices during the time of this early interview in 2016, it seems that certain broadcast slots continue to be held for specific character types—a practice that Yorke, with regard to British television production, emphasises in one short sentence: “Can you make them nice?” (2013, 5). The interviewed and observed practitioners sometimes took the same view as Yorke: “Niceness tends to kill characters. […] They key to empathy […] does not lie in manners or good behaviour. […] It lies in its ability to access and bond with our unconscious” (5).

Hess (2019) similarly argued that viewers must be able to “dock” with protagonists. Screenwriter Martin Behnke (2019) considered “a character who is always strong” to be “uninteresting”. A protagonist must grow in the course of a story, he explained; otherwise, the character remains incomprehensible to the viewers and there is “no drama”. Behnke’s point of reference here was the miniseries Die Stadt und die Macht/The City and the Power (ARD/NDR/Degeto 2016) (Fig. 7.2), which he co-wrote and which, according to his retrospective analysis, lacks congruent character development: the protagonist Susanne Kröhmer is expected to “suffer many strokes of fate”, but the viewer does not relate to this character, as “she has no agenda”.

Fig. 7.2

© ARD/Frédéric Batier

“A character who is always strong”—Susanne Kröhmer in the miniseries Die Stadt und die Macht.

Alongside the characters—or often linked to them—realism and authenticity emerged as important themes in the practitioners’ discussions of the state of German TV drama and its contents and forms.

7.1.4 Realism and Authenticity

Realism and authenticity are, as already mentioned, central aspects that media scholars, television critics and practitioners have all attributed to quality TV drama (see e.g. Mikos 2021, 187). The observed and interviewed TV producers also noted deficits in terms of authenticity and realism. In this context, they once again criticised a formulaic or uniform tone. The writer Kropf (in Hackfort, Konrad and Kropf 2018), for example, attested to the very standardised appearance of the hospital staff in German medical dramas. The nurses and doctors usually appear as if they have “just come out of make-up”:

No one looks like they worked in a hospital for even a minute that day. And that is vanity on the part of the actors possibly. But that’s also a complete lack of understanding. […] There seems to be an image going on that a perfect mask [is] a perfect image. No – a perfect mask depicts what that person experienced that day.

In this context, his co-writer Konrad also criticised the casting process: “Nobody asks: What do the people who do this job actually look like?” Hackfort, Konrad and Kropf (2018) addressed the interplay of different trades and thus production tendencies that affect content and aesthetic form. Camerawork, make-up, acting and casting, their diagnosis suggests, often fail to align and thus prevent realism and authenticity.

As for their own profession, the three scriptwriters expressed particular concern with the lack of authenticity in dialogue. In their view, dialogue in period dramas is especially inauthentic. In Charité (ARD/MDR 2017–), for example, an event miniseries about the famous Berlin hospital in different eras, the medical staff of yesteryear talk in a way that today’s viewers understand immediately and that veers heavily towards exposition: “I think this person has influenza infernalis / You mean this contagious disease that inevitably leads to death? / Exactly”, said Hackfort (in Hackfort, Konrad and Kropf 2018), mimicking the fictional professionals’ speech. According to him, there is no recognition that the viewers ultimately do not care “what kind of influenza this person has. The main thing is that the audience understands that [the characters] are about to die”. Such reasoning is familiar from screenplay guides and analyses. Yorke (2013, 168), for example, argues that not every word in dialogue has to be understandable; rather, the audience only needs to be able to decode the intention of the characters, not the exact meaning of their words.

In German television fiction, repeated diagnoses suggested, overly clear “explanatory dialogue” often prevails. Departing from this tendency received the practitioners’ praise. For example, Winterclass participants applauded the cryptic jargon of the investment bankers in the financial thriller Bad Banks (ZDF/Arte 2018–2020). Producers, writers and commissioning editors at this industry event also negotiated “expository dialogue” (Erklärdialoge) in the gangster drama 4 Blocks. Shot on location, partly starring amateur actors, set in the present and containing comparatively explicit scenes of violence, this production of the pay TV channel TNT Serie is generally considered a prime example of greater “authenticity”. 4 Blocks was marketed and reviewed accordingly (e.g. Mützel 2017). However, during the Winterclass workshop discussion with the show’s head writers—Hackfort, Konrad and Kropf (2017)—TV professionals criticised the first season’s repeated mentions that the migrant, criminal protagonists do not have permanent residence status, even decades after their arrival to Germany. The show’s three authors and editor Christian Honeck, who was present in the audience of experts, defended the prominence of this information at the dialogue level by saying that this fact was decisive for the characters portrayed, and their situation is explained and told from their perspective. But other voices identified an overly explanatory narration style.

Babylon Berlin director and writer Achim von Borries (2019) also considered “explanatory television” to be problematic: “When the viewer is to be lectured, all quality television is simply dead”. He feared stories that underwhelm the audience. As can be seen here, the negotiations on authenticity and realism once again revolved around the viewers: What can be expected from them in respect to content and storytelling? What do they understand? How much are they willing to engage in complex serial storylines? The TV professionals tended to view quality TV dramas as programmes that demand more from the audience than supposedly “ordinary television”—in accordance with similar attributions to quality TV in academia (e.g. Thompson 1996).

The conceptualisation and addressing of viewers, together with aspects of content, also played an important role when the practitioners explored the sociopolitical relevance of TV drama, as linked to realism and authenticity.

7.1.5 Sociopolitical Relevance

Sociopolitical relevance, like realism, has repeatedly functioned as a quality criterion in considerations of television (e.g. Weber 2020, 220). Some scholars have argued, in respect to German TV films, that fiction in particular can frame political and complex issues at the individual human level (Schatz and Schulz 1992, 701). Several of the interviewed and observed TV producers tended to use similar arguments and emphases. Hess (2019), for example, casually equated “high-end” series with “relevant” content. Jessen (2019) attributed to TV drama the potential to “change thinking and lead people more to democracy or good than any informative programme or documentary”. According to her, TV drama can not only inform an important subject but also enable viewers’ “emotional docking”. Following this assessment, relevance arises on not only a rational level. Viewers’ activity also seems to play an important role, which corresponds to theories of cultural studies whereby the meaning of a media text ultimately unfolds only in reception and appropriation (e.g. Johnson 1996, 97).

Florian Cossen (2018), who directed Deutschland 86 and the third part of the drama trilogy Mitten in Deutschland: NSU / NSU German History X (ARD et al. 2016) on the radical right-wing terrorist organisation National Socialist Underground, cited the potential of “using the burning [or magnifying] glass of fiction [Brennglas der Fiktion] to bump into something that is true without it being the truth”. When I asked him to expand, he explained that “truthfulness” relates to a broader significance “about the time [and] the society in which we live”. Through fictional narratives, “painful pinpricks” can be made “on issues that concern us all”.

Von Borries (2019) also dealt with relevance when exploring the quality of Babylon Berlin: he noted indirect references in the script of this period drama to current sociopolitical issues, a claim he also made in previously published press statements by him and his two director colleagues (e.g. Schader 2017). Paratexts on Babylon Berlin have further emphasised and discussed the parallels between the series’ historical world, the Weimar Republic of the late 1920s, and the present, in the context of the recent financial crisis and establishment of the right-wing party AfD—Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany) in Germany’s political landscape in 2013 (e.g. Schmitt, Thorsson and Scharffetter 2018). According to von Borries (2019), current relevance can be an important motive for viewers, including beyond Germany, to watch Babylon Berlin and results in a difference in quality as compared to other, more “ordinary” programmes. In developing the script, he noted, he and his two co-writers and directors were aware of the parallels between Babylon Berlin’s historical time and the present, but deliberately avoided “hammering away at it”. Relevance is important, but must not come across too clearly—echoing an argument common among television producers.

According to von Borries (2019), the series’ sociopolitical relevance also played an important role in the adaptation process. For example, he stated that, when adapting a script from Volker Kutscher’s novels (e.g. Kutscher 2017), he and his co-writers strengthened “all these political dimensions”. The series depicts, among other things, a clandestine rearmament and possible coup by the real-life Black Reichswehr, an illegal paramilitary group promoted by the German Reichswehr army during the Weimar Republic. The “big plot behind it”, summarised von Borries (2019), lies in the question of “how does each person decide and how can a democracy perish? […] why could it come to such a catastrophe?” The “catastrophe”, in the context of contemporary history, is obviously the takeover of the NSDAP, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, and its aftermaths in German and European history. Here, von Borries probably was referring to the “theme” or “controlling idea” (McKee 1997, 115), which is a central component of film dramaturgy and especially storytelling in TV drama. What is the underlying, central concept that unites various plotlines and episodes? The theme is also always about relevance, since (according to screenwriting manuals) audiences will discover meanings when they take the “controlling idea” and follow its implications into every aspect of their lives (McKee 1997, 115).

The deeper, overarching theme, as accentuated by von Borries in his self-praise for Babylon Berlin, is reminiscent of “double storytelling”. Eva Novrup Redvall (2013, 68) identifies this concept as a basic principle of the series productions from the Danish public broadcaster DR: “series not only containing ‘a good story’ but also a story with ethical or social connotations” are a must there. Several of the studied practitioners argued along these lines and identified quality in content that had multiple dimensions and was thus relevant.

At the same time, however, the practitioners also tended to reject the specific sociopolitical intentions of a programme or, more generally, its underlying ideology—similar to what John Thornton Caldwell (2008, 317) has said about the US film and television industry: “In trade talk, screenplays and films are never ideological, television shows are never racist or about race, and producer-creators never have a cultural axe to grind”. Since Caldwell made this observation, certain issues—such as #MeToo and attempts to increase diversity in production and representation—have become more prominent in both public and industry discourses. Germany’s TV workers are also influenced by these debates (see e.g. Zarges 2020a). Still, the studied TV professionals frequently distanced themselves from “political correctness” or at least stated that they had finally put aside doubts as to whether one was “allowed” to portray controversial issues.

Repeatedly, practitioners criticised German television fiction for having an overly obvious political agenda or (from their point of view) a misunderstood relevance. The screenwriter Hackfort (in Hackfort, Konrad and Kropf 2018), for example, faulted German broadcasters for often only considering subjects to be relevant if clearly aiming at topics of the moment. Thus, he also problematised the selection criteria of most commissioners. Frank Jastfelder (2018a), from Sky Deutschland, highlighted the question of how obvious relevance arises. In distinction to public-service television fiction, with its clear orientation towards social relevance—such as the three-part miniseries Mitten in Deutschland: NSU on right-wing violence—he emphasised the entertainment function of Sky’s German series: “For us, entertainment is in the foreground”. He had reservations about TV series concepts submitted with arguments such as “this has to be told now”. According to Jastfelder, such views correspond more to the work of public-service editors.

As Jastfelder’s interview indicates, the relevance debate has largely revolved around public-service television fiction and “‘the serious’ in a public service ethos” (Nelson 2007, 51). Several practitioners heavily criticised public-service commissioners’ supposed focus on sociopolitical relevance. For example, Bob Konrad (in Hackfort, Konrad and Kropf 2018), in an exchange with his two 4 Blocks co-writers, snarled about ZDFneo dramas such as Lobbyistin/Lobbyist (2017) and Tempel/Temple (2016): “it’s so public service, it makes you want to puke”. From his point of view, these ZDFneo productions deal with current social issues in a too simplistic and overly clear manner, such as gentrification in Tempel and corporate influence on politics in Lobbyistin.

At the same time, several television professionals demanded relevant content and quality from ARD and ZDF in particular, since, according to a recurring comment, they do not have the same financial pressures as the advertising-financed commercial broadcasters and can thus risk more unwieldy content. In many German public-service series, the practitioners missed this relevance or located it instead in streaming or pay TV productions. Jessen (2019), who emphasised the “democratic mission” of public broadcasters, praised Netflix and Amazon Prime Video for programmes that she found “deeply essential, interesting” and that moved her forward “as a human being”. The anthology series Black Mirror (Channel 4/Netflix 2011–2019), for example, negotiates “a deep realisation” beyond “pure suspense dramaturgy”, according to the former fiction head of HR:

What is morality? What is the human? What is worth fighting for? What should survive? Et cetera. These are democratic, philosophical and human questions that I don’t really find in any series on public television […] especially in Germany.

What is lost in Jessen’s applause for the transnational streaming providers here is the fact that Netflix was not involved in the first two seasons of Black Mirror and the original commissioner, Channel 4, is a UK public broadcaster, albeit one that also operates commercially to a great extent (Born 2003).

In the discussion of public-television fiction and its realism and relevance, the producers kept coming back to television films.⁴ The editor Harald Steinwender from BR, for example, emphasised the “tradition […] of thematic films”, which when programmed as part of a “kind of theme night”, made “discourse offerings to the television audience” (in Simionescu and Steinwender 2018). ARD’s national channel Das Erste (The First), in particular, likes to deal with “relevant” sociopolitical topics, unfixed to a particular genre, in its weekly films during Wednesday prime-time. Examples, among others, are Die Getriebenen / Merkel: Anatomy of a Crisis (ARD/RBB/NDR 2019), a political TV film about Chancellor Angela Merkel and German refugee policy around the year 2015, and Ökozid/Ecocide (ARD/RBB 2020), a near-future science-fiction courtroom drama in which Global South nations sue the Federal Republic of Germany for the consequences of climate change. Talk shows and documentaries in the subsequent linear broadcast, and even entire theme weeks, often take up the sociopolitical issues of such single films.

The television film also emerged more comprehensively as a central topos in the industry discourse on quality drama. Some practitioners saw a higher quality in individual fiction productions and considered them to usually be more relevant, or at least more daring and less formulaic, than most German series. But other TV makers regarded the ongoing importance of the TV film (especially in public-service fiction) as a fundamental structural problem of the German TV industry.

7.1.6 The Television Film as a Central Programme Trend

Greg M. Smith (2011, 113) has described series production as a constant manoeuvring between the advantages and disadvantages of serial and episodic structures. Accordingly, in their negotiation of the quality TV drama, the analysed television-makers repeatedly dealt with both poles—the series and the serial, episodic structure and ongoing dramatic continuity—and highlighted the TV film as a defining characteristic of German television. The practitioners often described the high number of TV films in comparison with other European nations (Fontaine and Pumares 2018, 2), and specifically public-service fiction ones, as a unique path of German television. However, other local and temporal contexts also have a tradition and appreciation of the television film (e.g. Monnet-Cantagrel 2021, 119), such as the “Golden Age of Live TV” (Feuer 2007, 147) in the US in the 1950s, which encompassed live “anthology” teleplays whose status as prestige programmes came from their proximity to theatre, a supposedly “higher” art form (Feuer 2007, 146–147; Feuer, Kerr and Vahimagi 1984). In British television, too, the television film was long considered more progressive in form and content than serial “long-form drama” (Creeber 2004, 1).

Especially in the German-speaking market, the development away from the TV film does not seem to have happened in the way that Robin Nelson (1997, 31) describes—away from the “television play” and towards the “flexi-narrative”, which mixes soap opera and procedural structures, serial and series. In Germany, the television film continues to form an important programme segment and thus shapes the work, as well as the argumentation, of many of the nation’s television creators. Producer and writer Jörg Winger (2017), for example, emphasised in our interview that the local TV fiction industry comes “from a television film tradition”. According to him, this tradition is reflected in, among other things, the relatively few prime-time slots for series. And with that statement, the relevance of fixed, linear programme windows, as a historically evolved structure of television that still holds great sway over the industry and audiences, thus became visible once more.

The existing programme structures and flavours are, as outlined in Sect. 4.3, shaped by, among other things, hybrids of television films and series, the so-called Reihe. Some practitioners considered Tatort—the best-known example of this kind of procedural with feature-length episodes—to be not only the “bonfire of the nation” (Hess 2019), around which a comparatively large and heterogeneous audience still comes together on Sunday night (e.g. Zubayr and Gerhard 2019, 102–103), but also an example of “German quality TV” (e.g. interview with Leibfried 2016). The decisive factor for this assessment seemed to be not so much the socially relevant and buzzy topics that Tatort deals with, as has been pointed out several times (e.g. Hißnauer, Scherer and Stockinger 2014a, 12), but rather its breaking away from formula and formatting and its involvement of various creators. Thus, commissioning editor Johanna Kraus (2018) explained about Tatort and the related Polizeiruf 110/Police Call 110 (DFF/ARD/ORF 1971–): “We have very exciting writers there. Different narrative styles are tried out. […] you also have different, very ambitious directors and also always a different look”. As Kraus, as a commissioning editor, supervised several Polizeiruf 110 films about Magdeburg’s chief detective, Doreen Brasch (Claudia Michelsen), and now leads the fiction department at the ARD local broadcaster MDR, her statement can be read as being influenced by self-interest and aimed at self-promotion (see Caldwell 2008, 14). For the discourse on the quality series and its comparison with the television film, it is particularly interesting that Kraus identifies quality precisely in the variance between episodes. The “always different look” results from Tatort’s and Polizeiruf 110’s division into minorly linked individual films and their respective changing production teams.

The tendency towards single films is also evident in the “event” miniseries. The practitioners critically addressed the so-called Mehrteiler as another traditional characteristic of German TV fiction when negotiating the contents and forms of quality drama. As a rule, these miniseries consist of two or three 90-minute episodes—quasi-films—and they usually air on linear television within a short time period and outside regular broadcast slots, as an “event”. “With a very big emphasis on event [like for] Dresden, Der Tunnel”, noted writer Hanno Hackfort (in Hackfort Konrad and Kropf 2018) with an ironic undertone, thus connecting the German miniseries to its more recent guise as “historical ‘event television’” (Cooke 2016). Such “event” dramas are (as already discussed in chapter 6) strongly influenced by the production company UFA Fiction and deal with topics of twentieth-century German history through individual, mostly female heroes. Their narratives include the aforementioned bombing of Dresden during the Second World War (Dresden, ZDF 2006) and the division of and escape attempts from the GDR in Der Tunnel/The Tunnel (Sat.1 2001). The stumbling block for Hackfort and his co-writers Konrad and Kropf was not so much the popular, formulaic or even revisionist form that this portrayal of German history, and especially National Socialism, takes (which many critics consider inappropriate). Rather, their issue was with the density of the plot, which they linked to the tendency towards television films. In connection with character construction, we have already reviewed their criticism that local television fiction is solely plot-driven. At an industry workshop, the three writers described it even more clearly as a structural problem in script development that the prevalence of the two or three 90-minute episode structure limits the possibilities of serial drama.

Particularly in public-television fiction, the tendency towards the Mehrteiler and the associated convergence with the television film continues.⁵ In terms of distribution and reviews, these two- or three-parters are often considered to be films rather than series. The practice of broadcasting miniseries in double episodes, and thus adapting them to the television film and the Mehrteiler format, is common; for example, the postwar spy drama Bonn—Alte Freunde, neue Feinde / Sleeping Dog (ARD/WDR 2023) was broadcast this way. When it comes to transnational or online-based releases, however, some German miniseries, such as Ku’damm 56, have been split into shorter series episodes. Martina Zöllner (2018) remarked that the 90-minute two- or three-parter has “a different flow” and that the dramaturgy must take into account the corresponding distribution. While for Zöllner combining the television film and more serial distribution and narration is possible (albeit not without its challenges), Edward Berger (2018), the director of several Deutschland 83 episodes (RTL2015) and the Netflix film Im Westen nichts Neues/All Quiet on the Western Front (2022), emphasised the difficulty of achieving such a “hybrid form”.

In the interviews, Berger emerged as a particularly vehement critic of the programming favouritism for television films. In his view, the television film—including the aforementioned borderline cases—is boring, antiquated and, compared to serials with more plot time and often stronger multi-perspectivity, superficial. The television film, he judged, is a German particularity that makes it difficult to connect with other, transnational markets. He chastised the Reihe film-series hybrid in particular for being “expressions of total standstill and conservatism”. According to Berger, the television film focus has also negatively impacted the German TV series: the local industry “missed the boat” for years in promoting series and instead relied on the “outdated 90-minute TV movie format”.

In the quality series discourse, practitioners variously hoped for, feared or at least noted the decline of the television film. Annette Hess (2019) casually described the television film as a “dying genre” that is considered “unsexy” in the industry: “Almost everyone wants to make series, series are being looked at”. This reputation of the serial, as expressed by Hess, probably stems from the public and media perception that series in particular are contemporary, innovative and of high quality. Of course, the fact that series are “looked at” can also mean that they have a stronger or more lasting presence with the audience, as Winger (2017) assessed. He considered series to be the more clever economic strategy as compared to the single TV film, partly because of viewers’ commitment to a specific platform or broadcaster over a longer period of time. Berger (2018) similarly criticised the television film’s short-lived nature, in part due to its frequent “up-to-the-minuteness” on sociopolitical issues, by which he was probably alluding to the public-service “theme film”. “They actually produce [TV films] for the dustbin”, he remarked.

Commissioning editors at public broadcasters, on the other hand, repeatedly upheld the quality and importance of television films. “Why does one actually despise the tradition of the television film, which the Americans do not have at all? […] Series is not synonymous with good”, argued Gebhard Henke (2018). The fact that individual films have always played an important role in US television history and are also commissioned and purchased by current streaming providers of US origin was somewhat lost in this comparison with the US.

Several public-service editors also described their own work as being strongly influenced by television films. In the project Mitten in Deutschland: NSU, following the crimes of the National Socialist Underground from different perspectives, the goal, according to its supervising editors, was to combine the television film and the serial. Steinwender (in Simionescu and Steinwender 2018) noted, however, that in the end only limited horizontal connections occurred between the project’s three films—due to a lack of time resources, their highly individual narratives and protagonists, and their respective lead creatives and their teams. Certain production conditions, as the next chapter looks more closely at, seem to have made serial storytelling across Mitten in Deutschland: NSU’s different episodes very difficult.

When it comes to comparing series against TV film-series hybrids as well as the traditional single TV film in German TV fiction, Berger’s sweeping “dustbin” critique can be counter-argued with the clear fact that several quality series projects from Germany have been short-lived and not very visible. Examples include Die Stadt und die Macht, which was taken into account in the interview sample and was often rated as a flop, as well as the German-Austrian crime biopic Freud (Netflix/ORF 2020), dismissed by many TV critics (e.g. Jungen 2020).

In their discussion of German television fiction, the practitioners repeatedly negotiated corresponding attempts in the local industry to produce and distribute “other”, qualitatively more valuable, more prestigious series.

7.2 Quality Drama Series from Germany

7.2.1 The Recent Series Boom

In view of the numerous television productions in the quality or high-end arena and the diversification of potential commissioners (described in Sect. 4.1), many television professionals professed a “gold rush time” (von Borries 2019) or “Gründerzeit of German television drama” (Zöllner 2018). This diagnosis is reminiscent of talk of the “golden” television era in other local and temporal contexts (see e.g. Agger 2020), such as US teleplays in the 1950s, and is certainly due to the timing of most of the interviews: they largely took place before the economic and energy crises in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the aftermaths of the Covid-19 pandemic. In their (still) positive sentiments, the practitioners repeatedly identified German quality drama in recent productions departing from the well-trodden paths of the nation’s television fiction. In some cases, such associations overlapped with self-promotion and self-marketing, as when industry representatives saw innovation and quality specifically in their own work. This known tendency towards self-promotion (e.g. Redvall 2013, 193) characterised the lectures and discussions at the attended industry workshops. Both the speakers and the industry participants in the audience sought to “sell” themselves and the institutions they represented as positively as possible and to establish networks.

Screenwriter Annette Hess’s (2019) survey of contemporary TV dramas went further than the sweeping enthusiasm for the “German series boom”, reminiscent of marketing materials, when she continually identified textual deficits and questioned the myth of “higher” quality from the new, internet-based providers. According to her, in view of streaming services’ online distribution and “the new viewing habits” of consumers, pilot episodes in particular must “grab [and] be exciting”. However, from Hess’s standpoint, the focus on “audience appeal” often promotes sensational stories and is not necessarily conducive to quality. In connection with current platforms and their serial distribution, she also addressed the high quantity of series “cranked out” by streaming services. You Are Wanted (Amazon Prime Video 2017–2018), which critics largely disregarded (e.g. Sander 2018), offers a comparatively early example. Its commissioner, Amazon Prime Video, is said to have pushed hard for quick completion in order to release its first German drama original before its competitor Netflix. The increased activities of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video spurred other critical voices in the industry, at least behind closed doors, regarding their German series productions. Even more, as they have cancelled several series and even stopped production in advance, new commissioners have increasingly come to be seen as unreliable or risky partners (see e.g. Lückerath 2022). The impression of a “boom” and the enthusiasm for the new US-based streaming services thus has become somewhat dampened.

In the practitioners’ debates on current German quality series, “prototypes” crystallised, similar to in the underlying, US-centred discussions in the newspaper feature pages and in academia. Again and again, the interviewed and observed TV professionals referred especially to Bad Banks, Babylon Berlin and 4 Blocks. I partly brought these series into the interviews myself—explicitly naming them as examples or by selecting interview partners related to them. Beyond these obvious examples of quality dramas, the practitioners spoke of more marginal ones, in the independent and newcomer area, in the local programmes of the ARD network (the so-called third channels, run by ARD’s different local broadcasters) or outside the established broadcast slots and their economic resources. Claudia Simionescu, the head of TV films at BR, for example, cited the local dramedy Hindafing (ARD/BR/Arte 2017–2019) as a “small project by university students” (Rafael Parente, Boris Kunz and others from HFF München, the University of Television and Film Munich) and emphasised regionality’s influence at the level of content: “very Bavarian […], very Heimat” and cast with “Bavarian folk actors” (in Simionescu and Steinwender 2018).

Just as Simionescu rated Hindafing as “of great prestigiousness” (for the commissioner BR, represented by her), the other practitioners often evaluated individual examples and potential manifestations of the quality TV drama in Germany. However, many industry representatives seemed to shy away from overt criticism in the interviews. This was indicated by the fact that, when partaking in unofficial conversations (which I overheard or conducted at industry workshops), some practitioners distanced themselves much more strongly from specific German series and their commissioners than they did in the recorded interviews. However, more diplomatic and cautious expression may not be necessarily or solely due to my presence; rather, it may also reflect the way many practitioners work: editors and producers in particular often must leave their own taste out of the equation and judge in an argumentatively well-founded and differentiated way. Such an analytical approach was hinted at in Claudia Simionescu and Harald Steinwender’s (2018) examination of Charité. According to Steinwender, the fact that this period medical drama, and especially its first season, was very successful in prime-time is partly due to the fact that it is a “family series in historical garb” that “pushes buttons”. “There you can already see what works, what is made for the German market”, Simionescu added. The “pushed buttons” include, among other things, melodramatic elements and the central characters of the three seasons so far. Set in different historical eras, each focuses on young, intelligent and attractive women with, firstly, medical ambitions in a male-dominated professional field and, secondly, challenges in their family and love life.⁶

Compared to Charité, many ambitious serials from Germany, with storylines across several episodes or seasons, have not been very successful—at least if one uses the conventional criterion of quantitative audience ratings as a yardstick. In the discussion of individual quality dramas from Germany, the practitioners also repeatedly dealt with such “failure studies” (Redvall 2013, 194).

7.2.2 Failures and Unfulfilled Expectations

In considering “failed” quality TV projects from Germany, television professionals moved towards the “failure studies” that Redvall (2013, 194) argues warrant close attention. After all, industry representatives generally prefer to talk about their stories of success. Hanno Hackfort (in Hackfort, Konrad and Kropf 2018) deviated from this rule when he emphasised the unavoidability and potential productivity of failure: “Innovation inevitably involves failure. If everything is a success, then something is wrong”. However, the failure that came up in the practitioners’ debates was often only that of others. While Hess (2019), for example, attested to writing “really for the viewer”, she considered Im Angesicht des Verbrechens to be “told from an artistic ivory tower”. In 2010, the audience figures for this ambitious ten-part crime drama about the “Russian mafia” in Berlin fell short of expectations when it was broadcast on Das Erste (e.g. Keil 2010).

Practitioners repeatedly attributed the supposed failure of German quality series projects to distribution: certain broadcast slots and patterns or the channel and its programming environment were considered the cause of disappointing audience figures. Jörg Winger (2017), for example, argued with regard to the historical series Deutschland 83, which he produced and co-wrote and which ran in weekly double episodes on RTL in 2015 with disappointing ratings: “The viewers who like our series did not find their way to RTL”. As with Deutschland 83, the weekly broadcast of miniseries in double episodes was frequently criticised, but so was the “event programming” model (within a few days of each other). In some cases, TV producers classified linear broadcasting as a fundamentally wrong distribution strategy for serials with ongoing dramatic continuity.

But, above all, the TV professionals saw the deficits of German quality TV drama in the narrative style and structure. Liane Jessen (2019), for example, attributed “major problems” in terms of dramaturgy to Babylon Berlin—a central prestige project of ARD, of which she was a leading member as fiction head of HR. Scritpwriter Martin Behnke (2018) described the action thriller You Are Wanted—which, as the first German Amazon production, can certainly be considered a quality TV project—as “narratively quite harebrained”. He felt he was seeing “set pieces from different series” whose interplay did not work.

Practitioners not only pled for narrative coherence but also argued that copying the US models was not enough. Achim von Borries (2019) insisted that the gangster drama 4 Blocks (whose third and final season was still pending at the time of the interview) needed to break further away from the “American models” and become “more specific”. A conspicuous approximation or adaptation of US precedents with a lower budget may quickly appear embarrassing. Heavy borrowing from Breaking Bad (AMC 2008–2013) in the ZDF miniseries Morgen hör ich auf/Tomorrow I Quit (ZDF 2016) and a direct comparison between the two by Norbert Himmler (then ZDF programme director), for example, led to ridicule in reviews (e.g. Freitag 2016).

Only rarely did the television-makers address sociopolitical or ideological aspects such as gender representations in their discussion of textual characteristics and deficits. Hess (2019) was an exception when she attributed to herself a “special feminist view” and evaluated ambitious German series from this perspective.

7.2.3 Gender Representations

With regard to gender representations, Hess (2019) classified many attempts at quality TV from Germany as lopsided and ultimately “chauvinistic”: “Always crime series set in the milieu”, she said, referring to 4 Blocks, which has a decided preponderance of male protagonists. She also found Babylon Berlin to be narrated from “a male point of view”. She suggested that its central protagonist, Charlotte Ritter, always caters to the male leads of the show—particularly the central character Gereon Rath. Hess’s criticism that sex workers are being portrayed the same as they have been “since the’70s,’80s” also seems to be aimed at Babylon Berlin, where Charlotte, a typist and later criminal assistant, occasionally, secretly and without traumatic burden engages in prostitution. Thus one possible reading of the series is that it perpetuates the trivialisation or mystification of female sex work.

Hess’s critique of gender representations sometimes veered towards Laura Mulvey’s (1975) concept of the “male gaze”, which posits that female characters in Hollywood cinema of the studio era were mostly objectified and rarely active protagonists. According to Hess (2019), a key factor is that men represent the majority of screenwriters and, even more so, directors, because “men look differently at it”. In view of constructivist gender theories (e.g. West and Zimmerman 1987) and their transfer to film and television analyses, corresponding assumptions of a dichotomous “male” and “female” gaze on the production side and a direct connection with representation are questionable. In the specific field of German quality TV approaches, moreover, tricky and stereotypical gender representations also emerge in drama productions where women have lead roles. For example, many reviewers criticised a backward, crude or even contemptuous portrayal of women in the six-part ZDFneo drama Parfum/Perfume (ZDFneo/Netflix 2018–), written by Eva Kranenburg (e.g. Steinhart 2018). The period miniseries Ku’damm 56, written by Hess, also met with “feminist criticism” for a rape scene that some voices (e.g. Rieger 2017) regarded as downplaying sexual assault and highly problematic in its framing. Namely, the show’s central character, Monika Schöllack, falls in love with her rapist. The staging of the rape merely serves the purpose of positioning the male protagonist as multifaceted through an ambivalent portrayal, argue Freya Herrmann and Vera Klocke (2020, 65). Following this interpretation, the striving for ambivalent characters—known to be an important ingredient of quality TV drama—led to problematic representations from a feminist point of view.

However one might assess the gender representations in Ku’damm 56 (and in its two sequels, Ku’damm 59 and 63) as well as Hess’s assumption of one clear “male gaze”, it remains that Hess’s feminist perspective on the German quality drama is fruitful. That is, from this angle, feminist evaluation criteria and the entrenched gender hierarchy of the German TV and film industry become visible. Women are still underrepresented in many creative guilds as well as in the project networks and screen idea work groups of individual productions. Skadi Loist and Elizabeth Prommer (2019, 99) point out that male directors dominate high-budget productions in particular in Germany’s film industry. In the cost-intensive segment of quality or high-end drama, too, the preponderance of (white, cis, hetero) male directors and head writers is par for the course. Hess (2019) offered her own count of Netflix’s German projects that had been announced at the time of the interview: “eight series, and of the 30 creators, five women”. In 2022, the Serienstudie (Series Study) commissioned by Hess and her colleague Kristin Derfler (on German series from between 2017 and 2021 with an episode length of 40 minutes or more) cemented the finding that women are significantly underrepresented “in all screenplay areas analysed” (Stieve 2022, 34, my translation).

The share of women in directing and screenwriting roles depends on the genre, as Loist and Prommer (2019, 105) show in their analysis of film festivals and Alia Perren and Thomas Schatz (2015, 91) reflect in their theorisation of the writer-producer: “when members of historically marginalised groups rise to positions of power [i.e. the showrunner], they frequently find themselves pigeonholed by genre and less recognised by critics”. According to Hess (2019), screenwriters in German TV fiction who come from the traditionally marginalised group of women are often only allowed to be responsible for less prestigious stories and genres, which in turn are evaluated more negatively in reviews. As she pointed out, the “Sunday women’s film”—that is, the TV films and film-series hybrids broadcast on ZDF Sunday prime-time under the label Herzkino (heart cinema)—are considered clichéd, “light” and “romantic pablum”, whereas the crime thriller often ranks as “artistically high quality”. But, she explained, the “same pattern” can be discerned again and again in German crime shows, too: “Some crazy cop […] who is not allowed to see his child. Always finds bags with coke, bags with weapons”.

As mentioned, numerous quality TV projects from Germany are anchored in the crime genre. Several of these dramas, such as Dogs of Berlin (Netflix 2018) and 4 Blocks, also have an almost entirely male arsenal of characters. However, Hess’s argument—regarding a valued “male” crime thriller versus a disregarded “female” romantic drama—must be countered by the fact that the German television crime thriller’s omnipresence has been repeatedly criticised in the industry and media (e.g. Herzog 2012). Despite its exaggeration, Hess’s argument is again productive at this point, as it hints at the contexts within which quality judgements are determined, as Charlotte Brunsdon has emphasised: “Quality for whom?, Judgement by whom?, On whose behalf” (1990, 73).⁷ Just as the attribution of typically “feminine” or “masculine” characteristics is potentially a judgemental and hierarchising process (see e.g. Krauß 2007, 145), quality judgements (to which discussion of quality TV inevitably leads) and gender can be related (see e.g. Weissmann 2015). This corresponding relation also came to the fore when practitioners complained about increasingly “light” and “sweet” TV drama in recent German television history (see Krauß 2021a). When dealing with the current content and forms of German television fiction, this topic was just one of many instances where the creators returned to television’s past.

7.3 Historical Perspectives on German TV Drama

7.3.1 Quality Drama in Television History

When considering (West) Germany’s television past, the industry discourse on quality TV drama once again bore “glocal” features: transnational references were joined by national and local ones.⁸ First, several practitioners cited past television productions to counter the impression that German-language television fiction has a quality deficit and, beyond the daily and weekly soap, no ongoing serial storytelling. “Television has always made serials […], the know-how has been there”, argued Claudia Simionescu (in Simionescu and Steinwender 2018) from BR, referring to Im Angesicht des Verbrechens from 2010 and KDD—Kriminaldauerdienst from 2007–2010, among other examples. The interviewees especially highlighted these two crime serials, which thus took on the status of “prototypes”. Less frequently, they also referred to the now largely forgotten Sat.1 thriller Blackout—Die Erinnerung ist tödlich / Blackout—Remembering Is Lethal (Sat.1 2006) and the experimental midlife-crisis drama Zeit der Helden/Time of Heroes (ARD/SWR/Arte 2013). All the cited examples are not yet quite historical, but they do come from a very different television landscape than today’s—one with fewer channels and commissioners where linear distribution clearly reigned supreme. The practitioners addressed stylistic and narrative devices in these series that were unusual, at least in the context of past German television fiction, such as the handheld camera work in KDD and (once again) serial storylines across series in lieu of episodic “monster of the week” dramaturgy.

The long-standing structure of linear scheduling means that programming is closely interwoven with television’s past. Johanna Kraus (2018) highlighted the GDR family epic Weissensee, which began in 2010 and ran until 2019, as a show with serial storylines that aired on Das Erste’s linear programme in the Tuesday prime-time slot. Usually, this weekly slot—which begins at 8:15 p.m., immediately following the national news Die Tagesschau—features one-case-per-episode shows, such as the crime comedy Mord mit Aussicht/Murder with a View (ARD/WDR 2008–) or the family drama Tierärztin Dr. Mertens / Zoo Doctor: My Mom the Vet (ARD/MDR 2006–), set in a zoo. Gebhard Henke (2018) dealt specifically with the programming of Im Angesicht des Verbrechens on the national public broadcaster Das Erste in the autumn of 2010. Due to “the relatively poor ratings”, Henke explained, Volker Herres, Das Erste’s programme director at the time, decided to append the last episode to the previous two episodes, which started on a Friday at 10 p.m. According to Henke’s account, the 10 p.m. broadcast slot was decided “in complete agreement” with the series’ director, Dominik Graf, and could not have aired earlier due to its 16+ rating. Still, according to Henke’s retrospective summary, this programming change was portrayed as “wrong and uncharitable” in the German media (see e.g. Keil 2010).

The practitioners also problematised the broadcast slots and rhythms of TV imports from the US. According to their account, well-known quality TV productions such as Breaking Bad and The Sopranos (HBO 1999–2007) were shown only on niche channels or at late, unattractive times, if at all, and thus reached very few viewers. Commissioning editors from public broadcasters also complained about the disappearance of foreign dramas from ARD’s and ZDF’s daytime and prime-time programmes over the years. This absence, they argued, may have made the linear broadcast of more recent quality dramas from the US and other countries more difficult.

Whether as an import or a German-commissioned production, serials with ongoing dramatic continuity seem to have had a hard time in the country’s mainstream television landscape in the recent past and so have been rather scarce. Cross-episode storytelling was more common, and potentially easier to realise, in the 1970s and 1980s than it was in the 2000s and 2010s. At least that is what several practitioners suggested when they located quality dramas in the distant television past of the 1970s and 1980s, including Acht Stunden sind kein Tag/Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day (ARD/WDR1972), Rote Erde/Red Earth (ARD/WDR 1983), Heimat—Eine deutsche Chronik / Heimat: A German Chronicle (ARD/WDR/SFB 1984),⁹Monaco Franze—Der ewige Stenz / Monaco Franze—Eternal Dandy (ARD/BR 1981–1983) and the now less well-known family period drama Löwengrube/Lion’s Den (ARD/BR 1989–1992). For Jörg Winger (2017), Heimat—which was also strongly perceived in other Western countries at the time—offered a point of comparison for the transnational success of the miniseries Deutschland 83, for which he was jointly responsible: Deutschland 83 is “the only German programme” that has “broken through in recent, long years, perhaps since Heimat”.

With Das Boot/The Boat (ARD/WDR 1981/1985), the practitioners identified a past work that has been continued as a series co-production under the same title (i.e. as a transnationally known “brand” [Jastfelder 2018a]) and that features “cross-stories between cinema and television” (Hackfort in Hackfort, Konrad and Kropf 2018). Günter Rohrbach—who, as managing director of Bavaria Film, was jointly responsible for the major project Das Boot and was head of WDR’s television drama department from 1965 to 1979—coined the term “amphibious film” (2009, first 1977, 170) for such productions. When it comes to amphibious films, exploitation in the cinema and on television is planned from the very beginning.¹⁰ Overlaps with cinema can also be seen in the fact that many “classic series” from Germany were conceived as “multi-part films” (see Hickethier 1998, 451).

Some of today’s TV practitioners also thought of these earlier TV series as films to some extent, identifying them primarily as works by well-known (male) film directors such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Helmut Dietl. Basically, they classified the public-service fiction of the 1970s and 1980s as bolder, more sociopolitically relevant or less formulaic. In contrast to this, they identified a paradigm shift towards mass compatibility and narrowing genre conventions beginning in the 1990s. In looking at these developments in the history of German television, the television-makers also sought to explain the present landscape.

7.3.2 “Harmonisation” and Formulas: Developments in Public-Service Drama

Problematic or lopsided developments, so the practitioners argued, have decisively shaped today’s television fiction and its textual characteristics. The editor Bernhard Gleim (2016) attested that, in particular, ARD’s and ZDF’s series productions for a long time served only the viewers’ “need for harmonisation”. Henke (2018) diagnosed a shift towards “lightly entertaining formats” in the 1980s and 1990s and attributed this to US imports—that is to say, to not only local but also external and transnational influences. Due to the hit soaps Dallas (US 1978–1991, CBS) and Dynasty (1981–1989, ABC), but also the ratings-boosting TV premiere of the film Pretty Woman (1989) on Das Erste, “the sophisticated television play [Fernsehspiel] and also the sophisticated series came under the wheels”.

In retrospect, the scriptwriters Hanno Hackfort, Bob Konrad and Richard Kropf (2018) also identified a loss of quality and described the establishment of commercial, advertising-financed television in the 1980s as a decisive caesura. Then came an “unspeakable urge” from the public-service broadcasters to not give the private competitors any ground by lowering themselves to their level, Hackfort pointed out. The criticism of the competition between public and private broadcasters and their shared “downward shift in quality” (Kammann, Jurkuhn and Wolf 2007, 17, my translation) is well-known. It is explored, for example, in Es werde Stadt!/It Will Be a City! (WDR et al. 2013–2014), a critical documentary on German TV drama on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the prestigious Grimme Award. In their off-camera commentary, directors Martin Farkas and Dominik Graf state:

More precisely, the reaction of the public-service broadcasters from the end of the 1990s onwards to the attack of the private broadcasters seemed like a belated total turnaround: away from all educational mandates and far away from all cultural pioneering functions. So exaggerated that one suspects a neurosis and wants to ask: What’s wrong with you? What is hurting you so much? (2014, my translation)

Graf and Farkas provide a larger context to this identified loss of quality and significance when they accuse political forces of deliberately undermining the public-service system “because it was too insubordinate for them”. They accuse the public broadcasters themselves of operating commercially and distorting the market with profit-oriented production and distribution subsidiaries. However, the resonating notion of “system purity” (Kammann, Jurkuhn and Wolf 2007, 69, my translation) can hardly be sustained in either the current or the past media environment. Lutz Hachmeister (1994, 53) had already stated in 1994, ten years after the introduction of commercial television in Germany, that convergence is simply inevitable where two television systems refer to the same audiences and partly to the same economic reference groups, even if those systems are organised differently.

When taking a historical view, Gleim (2016) noted less an alignment of the public broadcasters with their advertising-financed competition than a contrary and reactionary target-group orientation. Günter Struve, programme director of Das Erste from 1992 to 2008, deliberately counteracted “the 14- to 49-year-old target group by looking at the actual demographics […] through the Degeto films on Friday, the famous Neubauer melodramas”. These TV films, Gleim argued during our interview, shaped German series in a certain way: “You can see that very concretely in the Tuesday slot. […] The central pattern of this Tuesday series is that a middle-aged woman loses her husband and then has another new existence”. Gleim’s statement contains various references to the more recent television past: to the long-standing core target group of advertising-financed commercial television—14- to 49-year-olds—which is countered by an ageing German population, and to broadcast slots, including Tuesday night, which to this day remains Das Erste’s only regular prime-time slot for 45-minute series. In addition, Gleim addressed Degeto television films. Largely associated with the actor Christine Neubauer and melodrama, the ARD subsidiary Degeto was considered a “schmaltz factory” by newspaper critics in the 2000s and 2010s (e.g. Bergmann 2012). Degeto also came under criticism because its budget was overdrawn for several years, resulting in an oversupply of programming (Zarges 2014).

The Süßstoffdebatte (sweetener debate) around 2001 (see e.g. Volker 2009, 11) involved distinctly negative talk around a Degetoisierung (Degeto-isation) of public television (Bergmann 2012) and, with attention to ZDF’s Sunday-night romance films, of a Pilcherisierung (Pilcher-isation; Kammann et al. 2007, 100). ZDF’s Sunday schedule became particularly well-known for TV versions of Rosamunde Pilcher’s romance novels (the first adaptation was Rosamunde Pilcher: Stürmische Begegnung / Rosamunde Pilcher: The Day of the Storm, ZDF/ORF 1993). In television criticism and in the industry, a so-called optimisation paper attracted specific criticism. The former ARD television film coordinator Jürgen Kellermeier drafted this paper in 2000, and today it is no longer accessible (Heinz 2012, 299). According to the guidelines formulated there, a television film must, among other things, be “cheerfully comically emotional” (quoted in Heinz 2012, 299, my translation) and have a narrative that is “uncomplicated, simple, clear, and in no way confusing” (quoted in Bergmann 2012, my translation). In addition, the television film should be set in an “attractive, at least interesting, not repulsive” milieu (quoted in Bergmann 2012, my translation) and should not mix genres (Heinz 2012, 299–301).

In Gleim’s talk of “Neubauer melodramas” (Neubauer Schinken), a clear coldness can be felt towards such manifestations of German television fiction. Here, as in the entire Süßstoffdebatte, the aforementioned tendency to devalue content and genres with “feminine” connotations is also apparent. More specifically, Gleim referred to the historically evolved tone of Das Erste’s Tuesday prime-time programme as being shaped by productions such as Um Himmels Willen/For Heaven’s Sake (ARD/MDR 2002–2021), a light comedy procedural about a group of nuns, and the weekly medical drama In aller Freundschaft/In All Friendship (ARD/MDR 1998–), which is broadcast in the slot immediately afterwards. Following Gleim, these series show “connections to the German Heimatfilm” (a film genre highly popular in the late 1940s to the early 1960s, frequently accused of kitsch, that had a long-standing presence on German television) and primarily appeal to an older audience.

The “50-plus age group” (Gaßner 2006, 16, my translation)—which is decisive in Germany’s overall demographics and which, according to quantitative viewer data, spends significantly more time watching (linear) television (e.g. Engel 2016)—became the focus of public-service series fiction in the course of German television history. Advertising-financed private television is generally aimed at a younger target group, which is considered more flexible in its purchasing decisions and is thus of particular interest to advertisers.

7.3.3 US- and Mainstream-Centricity: Germany’s Commercial Broadcasters

In general, commercial broadcasters frame their audience in a way fundamentally different than their public-service counterparts do. They see viewers primarily from an economic perspective—as receivers of advertisers’ paid-for messages, and not so much as citizens of a society to be connected (Ang 1991, 53). More recently in the world of Germany’s commercial broadcasters, however, crucial shifts have occurred, because, among other things, viewers can now choose between a larger number of programmes and platforms and also watch formerly linear-only television programmes online. The “techniques of quantification”—which, according to Andreas Reckwitz (2018, 174; see also 2020, 158), play an important role especially for “singular goods” in the “society of singularities” and form an economic foundation for advertising-financed television—have become differentiated and refined in this context. The development producer Gunther Eschke (2015) critically noted, with regard to target-group orientations and programme developments at commercial broadcasters in Germany, that for too long the aim has been at a big “mainstream”, thus resulting in a very conservative approach. And, at some point, this approach to programmes and audiences stopped working. Audience maximisation also characterised US networks until the 1980s (e.g. Hoskins and Mirus 1988, 507). In 1988, Colin Hoskins and Rolf Mirus (1988, 505) still advised: “[I]t is not wise to broadcast material that is so sophisticated that potential audiences switch to a different broadcaster or seek alternative forms of entertainment”. The quality TV drama, on the other hand, and as previously mentioned, is usually associated with narrowcasting—aiming at a more specific target group. This approach would become formative for the US television industry starting in the 1990s (Parsons 2003). In the smaller German television market, however, this target-group fragmentation was absent until recent years. Therefore, as can be deduced from Eschke’s diagnosis, more specific or “unwieldy” quality dramas for a long time faced difficulties within Germany’s commercial channels.

With regard to more recent developments at Germany’s two big private broadcasters, RTL and Sat.1, Eschke (2015) also problematised the single-minded US-centrism from the 2000s onwards, as a result of which the two broadcasters failed to develop new drama formats of their own and to promote local talent. The immense ratings successes of US procedurals such as House, M.D. (Fox 2004–2012) and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS 2000–2015) were decisive for this US-centrism. German audiences’ previous tendency to generally prefer German series (Windeler et al. 2001, 96) seemed to suddenly evaporate.

Roger Schawinski also refers to this development in Die TV-Falle (The TV Trap), a retrospective on his time as managing director at Sat.1 from 2003 to 2006, a period he describes as a “CSI-isation of the television world” (2008, 77) and a “huge tectonic shift in the tastes of the German audience” (87):

German series were now generally rejected to a large extent, which soon forced RTL to discontinue their new, most important and even their multiple award-winning series by the dozen. (87–88, my translations)

In the course of these developments, a strategy emerged to emulate US series and participate in this “CSI-isation” with German-commissioned productions. In his interview, Joachim Kosack (2019) mentioned the German crime series R. I. S.—Die Sprache der Toten / R. I. S.—The Language of the Dead (Sat.1 2007–2008), which he produced, about a team of forensic specialists. Like its Italian predecessor R.I.S.—Delitti imperfetti / R.I.S—Imperfect Crimes (Canale 5 2005–2009), it obviously tried to build on the success of CSI. However, according to Kosack’s retrospective diagnosis, the German R.I.S. show lacked a “German soul”. The idea of a “German soul” is more than difficult to apprehend in view of the transnational dimensions of Germany’s television and media industry, and especially its series production. On the other hand, the question of local specifics played an important role in the industry discourse again and again when it came to describing the “different quality” of German drama series in a transnational media environment, export opportunities and these series’ success on the domestic market.

Alongside the pushback against German series at the commercial stations, countervailing tendencies emerged. Kosack (2019) cited, for example, the Sat.1 successes Der letzte Bulle/The Last Cop (2010–2014), about a policeman from the 1980s put into a modern police department after emerging from a coma, and the legal dramedy Danni Lowinski (2010–2014), about a lawyer offering her services in a shopping mall. In Kosack’s estimation, both shows, unlike R. I. S., had a “German soul again”. But RTL and especially Sat.1—respectively operated by the two opposing media groups RTL Group and ProSiebenSat.1 Media—still repeatedly struggle to anchor German series as well as broadcast slots for them. In 2020, for example, the industry magazine DWDL.de ascribed to Sat.1’s newly launched comedy series Die Läusemutter/Lice Mother (2020) and Think Big! (2020) “disaster ratings” (Krei 2020, my translation). In contrast to the lauded US drama, the German series may have established a lacklustre image in the 2000s, as Kosack (in Eschke and Bohne 2010, 8, my translation) pointed out in 2010: “German series today are simply uncool for now”.

In combination with the developments described at ARD and ZDF—towards light, entertaining content and conservatism in television drama—the reluctance of commercial broadcasters from the mid-2000s onwards ultimately meant that many German series were public-service commissions and aimed at older viewer groups. According to several practitioners, series also seem to have played only a subordinate role in Germany’s television history, due to the aforementioned dominance of the television film.

7.3.4 Germany’s Television Film Tradition

In terms of quality and value, the television film in Germany traditionally ranked above the series. Several practitioners arrived at this assessment—although it is certainly a contestable viewpoint, when considered against the backdrop of the aforementioned quality series of yesteryear, such as Heimat and Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz (ARD/WDR/RAI 1980). Jörg Winger (2017) identified a certain “value pyramid in Germany” in the past (which he did not specify more precisely): the motion picture always had been “the supreme discipline”; next came the television film, “at some distance and then nothing for a long time”, with the series bringing up the rear. Rather than a valuable art form, the series was considered a mere “commodity”.

The editor Gleim (2016) similarly identified a traditionally marginal role for the series as compared to the TV film and saw the reasons for this as being the “inability to integrate entertainment” into the concept of culture. The “German culture” that the interviewee identified in this context derives from making comparisons to its Anglo-American counterpart; paraphrasing his former boss at Radio Bremen (one of ARD’s local broadcasters), Gleim contrasted Goethe and Shakespeare:

If you want to know what German television is like, then you have to look at what the two great classics from England and Germany look like. Goethe is educational theatre and Shakespeare integrates elements of popular theatre to a significant degree.

According to Gleim, the paltry reputation of the television series stems from this tradition and was reflected in its former primary environment: the pre-prime-time slot (Vorabend), where, in contrast to other public-service slots, ads were (and are) shown. Series in this context offered advertisers “something like regularity”, Gleim suggested, but due to its commercial background, this segment of public-service drama was outsourced to a certain extent. Internally at the public-service ARD, the pre-prime-time series had been described as a “hooker” who “goes out on the street so that the brother can study”—the brother presumably being the TV film shown at prime-time. In this saying, which seems to belong to a certain time and in which gendered production cultures come to light, a critique of the commercialisation of television emerges that, today, hardly plays a role in discourses on German quality TV drama. Furthermore, the low status of the series as compared to the television film (see also Hickethier 1998, 356–57) once again resurfaced.

The practitioners also discussed the tendency towards television films and German audiences’ special appreciation of them with regard to production processes, especially vis-à-vis the important role of directing—commonly associated with single films. The following chapter delves into how the television professionals focused on production, and in particular script development, in their discourse on the quality TV drama. They linked quality drama to certain screenwriting methods and negotiated which production cultures might enable this kind of television.

Notes

• 1. For their arguments on foreign quality TV dramas, see Sect. 2.3.

• 2. The popular crime procedural Tatort consists of different parts and episodes made by the various ARD members, which are shot and produced in their local contexts.

• 3. There are more than 20 teams and about 35 episodes of Tatort a year. Therefore, a team might feature in only one or two episodes a year.

• 4. As explored in Sect. 4.3, television films emerged as a central, ongoing trend in German TV fiction in the discussion on series types and production.

• 5. In addition to the trilogy Mitten in Deutschland: NSU, which was a focus during the interview acquisition process, many other miniseries with two or three 90-minute episodes were produced during the sample period (since 2015). For example: Winnetou—Der Mythos lebt / Winnetou—The Legend Lives (RTL 2016), Honigfrauen/Honey Women (ZDF2017), Gladbeck/54 Hours (ARD/Degeto 2018), Preis der Freiheit/The Price of Freedom (ZDF 2019), Club der singenden Metzger/The Master Butcher (ARD/Degeto/SWR2019), Altes Land/Old Land (ZDF 2020), and Alice (ARD et al. 2022).

• 6. The fourth season of Charité (2024), still in production at the time of writing, is set in the future in the year 2049.

• 7. Chapter 2 deals in more detail with the contexts of judgements of quality.

• 8. For a more detailed discussion on the glocal features of the industry discourse on quality TV drama, see chapter 6.

• 9. Heimat had various, but now less popular, sequels, such as, among others, the second season Die zweite Heimat—Chronik einer Jugend / The Second Heimat—Chronicle of Youth (ARD et al. 1992).

• 10. Chapter 4 looks more closely at the current trend towards increasingly fluid boundaries between film and television production.