What’s the matter: David and Victoria, football legend and Spice Girl. And yes, the ups and downs of Manchester United’s golden boy’s career are front and center. You don’t need a heart for football for this series. Victoria doesn’t have one either.
Secret star: The Beckhams’ gel hairstyles – different in every flashback scene – probably reached their eccentric peak in 2005.
Not suitable for: Relationship cynics and enemies of the noughties. Aurelie by Blazekovic
Four episodes, on Netflix.
The therapy
Larenz (Stephan Kampwirth) carries his dead dog Sinbad home.
(Photo: Britta Krehl)
What’s the matter: Josy, Viktor Larenz’s twelve-year-old daughter, disappears. In order to come to terms with the loss, the psychiatrist retreats to the island of Parkum. There are: quirky islanders, mudflats, storms, a missing dog and a visit from a young woman with schizophrenic delusions. Otherwise, as always with books by Sebastian Fitzek: nothing is as it seems.
Secret star: The clinical psychiatrist Dr. Martin Roth, a marginal character in the book, a semi-autistic co-star in the series.
Not suitable for: People like Denis Scheck, who consider Fitzek’s work to be the “zero line of contemporary German literature”. Jacob Biazza
Six episodes, on Prime.
Charité intensive: Against time
Surgeon Georg Lurje is preparing for a liver transplant at the Berlin Charité.
(Photo: rbb/DOCDAYS Productions)
What’s the matter: People who suffer from organ damage – a weak heart, a collapsed liver – hope and fear that they will receive a donor organ so that they can continue to live.
Secret star: The patients who speak frankly about their fight for survival.
Not suitable for: Hospital phobics. You can literally see, feel and smell the linoleum floor and the disinfectants. Felix Hütten
Four episodes in which ARD media library.
A question of chemistry
Brie Larson as Elizabeth Zott.
(Photo: Apple TV+)
What’s the matter: The chemist Elizabeth Zott (Brie Larson) landed a job at a renowned institute in the late 1950s, but she is not allowed to do research. She makes her career through a detour – a television cooking show that gives her a feminist boost.
Secret star: The furnishings – the period around 1960 has been lovingly reconstructed, based on private photos.
Not suitable for: People who always compare everything with reality. There were plenty of women who had obstacles put in their way back then, but Elizabeth Zott is pure fiction. Susan Vahabzadeh
Eight episodes, on Apple TV+.
Naked over Berlin
Jannik (Lorenzo Germeno) and Tai (Anh Khoa Trần), their prisoner, watch from the neighboring apartment.
(Photo: SWR/Studio.tv.film/Oliver Feist)
What’s the matter: Two students lock the principal of their school in his apartment. Their prisoner has a dark secret that they want to tease out of him. But they also struggle with the fact that they are young. And as we all know, it’s extremely complicated.
Secret star: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. One of the two boys is enthusiastic about classical music. On the soundtrack, the dark plot repeatedly turns into an operetta. But it wouldn’t work without the wonderfully sunny, people-friendly tone of Axel Ranisch’s production.
Not suitable for: Teacher. Well, no. Also for teachers. Philipp Bovermann
Six episodes in which ARD media library.