The nineties, the nineties – talkative contemporaries are having serious thoughts as to why the nineties are so terribly missed. The answer couldn’t be simpler: back then people were disarmed, now they’re being upgraded, the old fear of the end of the world is back. When you think of the nineties, you might think of the gold Franzi, the Melitta man and other so-called cult kitsch, but in fact you think of a time when the fear of the end of the world was finally gone.
So perfect timing from the RTL planning strategists, around the Easter of the hell year 2022 of all times King of Palma can also be placed in prime time. A six-part series based on true events about Matti Adler (Henning Baum) from Dortmund, who at the beginning of the flamboyant nineties wanted to make his fortune with the bar “Bieradler” he had leased on Mallorca, which he didn’t succeed in doing. The protection money extortionists and top corruptis of the Mallorca mafia prefer to milk the Mallorca fans, who fly in mainly from Germany, alone, so the story is also about the evil, dark side of mass tourism. And is therefore made for a TV event.
The German not only likes to go on vacation, he also likes to watch himself doing it
The German tourist, who has frightened people and animals all over the world with his sandal models and the holy avarice in tips for generations, not only likes to go on vacation, he also loves to watch himself on TV while on vacation. In 1976, an NDR series about the Semmeling family stranded in the fictional Tyrolean winter sports resort of Oertzl was a hit. One of Dieter Wedel’s more lasting stories, in which the package travel industry was examined. Unforgotten: Hans Brenner as the devious waiter Wastl in the darned sports hotel. And of course the specially composed and probably only half-serious film music: “We drive giant slalom right into happiness.”
Music is also important in King of Palma, because when the RTL station gets closer to the 80s and 90s, it is always touched when it comes to its own beginnings on TV. The Cologne shooters celebrate themselves and turn up the music system too loud, that was already in the biopic about the early years of Boris Becker (The Rebel – from Leimen to Wimbledon) a few months ago when the corresponding playlist was rattled up and down until it was handed over, from Bruce Hornsby to Bon Jovi to Lionel Richie. Exactly like now in King of Palma: always right along the edge of a nineties musical. “La Isla Bonita”, “Just Can’t Get Enough”, “Sweet Dreams”, “Holding Out for a Hero”, “I Dreamed of You” and all the other well hung stuff. Even “Wind of Change” is recorded, because in the background of the action the Berlin Wall has just been torn down by the Oggersheim steamroller Kohl himself, and at the World Cup in Italy the well-trained Lothar Matthäus drives the German footballers to the title.
What if that’s nothing? The first holiday together for East and West Germans
The nineties? A dream. East and West Germans are celebrating their first summer together in Mallorca, drinking and bawling to bring together what doesn’t belong together. Tourists from Leipzig sometimes take other people’s suitcases from the baggage carousel when they arrive, which they call “Aufbau Ost”. There’s plenty up for grabs in Mallorca: the main character Bianca Bärwald, brilliantly played by Pia-Micaela Barucki, even gets an autograph painted on her T-shirt by Costa Cordalis (played by son Lucas).
Director Damian John Harper and the team of authors around Veronica Priefer and Johannes Kunkel charmingly strain clichéd images of adventurous East Germans and West German car freaks who liked to have the steering wheel covered in bull leather, exclusively of bulls that fell in the arena. Martin Semmelrogge, personified memory of the past, lets perfectly formed Semmelrogge sentences run out of the crumpled face: “You know, when I was your age, in the prime of life – I gave a shit on everything.” If you as a viewer are treated so finely on the one hand, you are a little disillusioned on the other hand with the one-dimensional portrayal of the Mallorquins, who are practically painted across the board as devious, corrupt and half-silk. On Mallorca, even women let the authorities put them on course with a wad of banknotes in their haversack.
cliché load? never mind Thanks to the people playing along and the tension that builds
The fact that the whole thing doesn’t collapse under a certain burden of clichés is largely due to the people who play along. Henning Baum is currently RTL’s employee of the week anyway, in the passion he just convinced as Pontius Pilatus, in the Malle saga he is the lucky innkeeper with the footballer name Matti Adler and the Rudi Völler hairstyle. He has peddled the house in Dortmund, the family peace is fragile, now all intruders are complimented in his wonderful world of beer eagles with a wonderful West German sound: “Take your hat with you, you monkey, and fuck off.” Baum in the open Hawaiian shirt is a younger brother of Schimmi Schimanski, only without his ambiguity. Matti Adler: the good guy from Malle, with the most televisions and the loudest system on the whole Playa.
The story is thick and of course sometimes too thick, but it is told in a completely exciting way and beautifully decorated down to the last Asi palm. Proll stuff at its finest. A journey through time. That’s her job. If you can’t get enough and want to delve into true Mallorca history, listen to the True Crime Podcast The Real Bierkönig – Murder in Mallorca about the German restaurateur and parrot breeder Manfred Meisel, who was eventually murdered. Six Spotify episodes by journalists Marcus Engert and Phil Jahner.
Once grabs The King of Palma even in the footballing course of events, Matti Adler’s shop should be buzzing at the 90 World Cup, he gives everything for that. “The day before the quarterfinals against Yugoslavia, Matti hired a whole army of promoters,” says the narrator’s voice, but in real life the game against Yugoslavia was already in the preliminary round, in the quarterfinals the German neck spoilers played against ČSFR. That’s how it is with the nineties, which is so fondly remembered right now. In reality it was sometimes different.
“The King of Palma”, on RTL +