Perhaps the best way to explain the matter is by comparing desserts by Thomas Bernhard: “The Austrian mentality is like a punch donut, red on the outside, brown on the inside and always a bit drunk,” the famous and infamous writer asserted decades ago. Now in Austria people are quite flexible, at least as far as the exterior paintwork is concerned: over the years it has changed from red to black to turquoise and blue. The fact that the government coalition of conservatives and right-wing populists had to be dissolved two years ago is due to a “drunk story” of the Vice Chancellor and head of the blue FPÖ, Heinz-Christian Strache. In the summer of 2017, he met an alleged oligarch niece in a villa on the Spanish holiday island of Ibiza. What happened there is known from a secretly recorded video, now there is “The Ibiza Affair” as a four-part television series on Sky.
A few days before the television premiere on October 21, the pay-TV giant from Unterföhring invited guests to the Arri Kino in Munich, where the first two episodes will be shown. “Too true to be made up,” says the photo wall set up in the inner courtyard of the cinema – and in fact the series makers stick to the real events very closely, not just when re-enacting the Ibiza video. The series only goes to the island in episode three, the actors appearing in it Nicholas Ofczarek, Cosima Lehninger and Andreas Lust have come to the Munich premiere, as have director Christopher Schier and the Munich producer Max Wiedemann.
Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer, the investigative journalists of the Süddeutsche Zeitung have in common with colleagues from the news magazine The mirror exposed this political scandal. In the series they are embodied by Patrick Güldenberg and Stefan Murr, the four men stand on the edge of the red carpet and talk lively. “We only got to know each other after the shooting,” reveals Murr. But the most prominent series role is played by Andreas Lust, who created the self-proclaimed “Red Bull Brother from Austria” Heinz-Christian Strache as a charismatic and power-drunk populist.
What is great is what Nicholas Ofczarek does in the lead role
But how do you approach such a person? “First I looked at his public and semi-public appearances,” says the actor, “and to my surprise, I discovered some parallels in life.” Like Strache, he comes from a similar environment in Vienna, both are about the same age. “I consider him an authentic person, he is easy to read and not behind the scenes.” He did not want to defend Strache, he wanted access to this “great role”.
It is also great what Nicholas Ofczarek does in the lead role: He plays the private detective who is behind the video together with a Viennese lawyer (David A. Hamade) as a mixture of secret agent and underworld boss. The story is told from his perspective, he also rented the “suspiciously unadorned” villa on Ibiza, according to Ofczarek, instructed the fake oligarch and hid cameras. Apparently, he didn’t think too much about what happened afterwards. “This is not a heroic story,” says the actor, “we are all losers”.
Incidentally, he never met his real role model, who is in custody. The Ibiza video also has on the current advertisement affair and the resignation of Chancellor Kurz guided. Nicholas Ofczarek does not want to go too deeply into a conversation about it: “I consider political statements by actors to be expendable.” It is an entertaining as well as terrifying series about the decline of moral values, which looks a bit at US film role models such as “Vice” or “The Big Short” and which is unlikely to get past the TV award juries in the coming months.
After the screening, the series makers are asked whether they want to continue straight away, since the political scandals in the Punschkrapferl Republic of Austria are not going to end. Thereupon Julian Looman, who plays the Strache speci Johann Gudenus in the series, says: “While we are talking here, you are already writing the second season in Parliament.”