“Everything dark” in BR: Warm beer in the blackout – media

Ironically, before the penalty, it is completely dark. When the floodlights on the soccer field in the fictitious Kekenberg went out at that very moment, the opposing team from the hostile neighboring community naturally suspected calculation. But it’s serious. Soon there are no lights in the whole village, no petrol, the telephone connection fails, and at some point there is not even enough water to flush the toilet. Like all of Europe, Kekenberg in Austria is affected by a blackout.

Everything dark – that’s the name of the German-Austrian mini-series, which will be on Bavarian television from Tuesday evening (and is already in the media library) and which satirically takes up a crisis scenario that doesn’t seem far-fetched in times of high energy prices and a lack of gas supply.

When she wrote the screenplay for the six episodes, Selina Gina Kolland had Marc Elsberg’s bestseller “Blackout” in mind. It is not the first adaptation of the thriller. The Joyn series ran last year blackout with Moritz Bleibtreu, who went through the scenario of a power failure, including serious consequences and threats. Everything dark asks the same questions – Where do you get food? Who keeps their nerves, who loses them? What about the hospitals? – but distorts them into comedy.

Too absurd for “Dahoam is Dahoam”, not cynical enough for “Braunschlag”

Now it has to be said that the spectrum of quirky villagers in Kekenberg would offer the best situation comedy even without a blackout. A completely overwhelmed mayor (who wasn’t elected, but appointed with a checklist while drunk), a former professional soccer player with an anxiety disorder and an umbrella with a name, a prepper couple from Germany who dance in the well-filled bunker, and a foolish aluminum hat wearer, waiting for the lizard people to invade and collecting ORF moderators in the Leitz folder – just to name the wildest. And that is exactly the crux.

The series (director: Michael Riebl) gets tangled up in individual skits and picks up so many storylines that it completely loses sight of the blackout. The viewers get a national emergency, a catastrophic supply situation Everything is dark hardly anything with. Conspiracy theories? medication shortage? Famine? Is faded out in Kekenberg, okay, there is only candlelight, but families will soon find each other here, love affairs are dared, neighbors are reconciled. Wasn’t this daily soap about a blackout? Everything dark is too absurd for Home is home and not cynical enough for brown stroke. This is a pity, especially because the series is well cast, especially the female parts with Hilde Dalik as the embittered landlady, Miriam Fussenegger as a neurotic ex-professional athlete and Martina Ebm as apparently the only one in the whole village with a brain.

Maybe you have to the makers of Everything dark also simply showing respect when they point out warm beer as the real worst thing that can happen in a blackout at a time when many in Europe fear the freezing autumn and winter. The satire doesn’t work, but how does the mayor say in the most casual Austrian? “Fear to death is a gstorm.”

Everything dark, BR, from September 13th every Tuesday in double episodes, 8:15 p.m., and in the BR media library.

You can find more series recommendations here.

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