TV tip
Thriller series “Westwall” on ZDF
Julia (Emma Bading) has to face the dark side of her past. Photo: Krzysztof Wiktor / ZDF / dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
«Westwall» tells of young outsiders, a charismatic right-wing terrorist and shady constitutional protectionists. The ZDF series is both a political thriller and a family drama.
It is a structure that reflects the Nazis’ megalomania in a terrifying way: The Siegfried Line was a defensive line of more than 600 kilometers with thousands of bunkers, tunnels and trenches.
Remains are still visible today, for example in Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia. The thriller series “Westwall”, which can already be seen in the ZDF media library, is set between the old bunker ruins. It is thematically but highly topical. On Saturday (November 27th) the first two episodes will be shown on ZDF (9.45pm), the entire series will be broadcast later on ZDFneo (December 7th / 8th).
Right-wing extremist Ira Tetzel (evil and charismatic at the same time: Jeanette Hain), who has gone into hiding, recruits homeless young people and trains them in a forest area on the former Siegfried Line for a terrorist attack. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution is on her trail, also thanks to the dropout Nick (Jannik Schümann, “Tribes of Europa”) and the police student Julia (Emma Bading, “Play”), who becomes the plaything of a conspiracy and her family past.
In the course of the six episodes, which come up with exciting twists and turns and moments of shock, good and bad blur again and again. The conflict between the characters is clearly noticeable.
There would be constitutional protector Florian Keppler (Devid Striesow, “8 days”), who puts homeless Nick as an undercover agent on Julia, puts his life in danger and still looks after his own son. Nick, in turn, who still has a large swastika tattoo on his back, falls in love with the self-confident, stubborn police student and still has to betray her.
«I am not interested in black-and-white good-bad characters. I find that boring, as an actor and consumer, ”says Nick actor Schümann in an interview with the German Press Agency. “It is precisely the ambivalence of the characters, who are basically all lost, that I find so exciting about the novel.”
“Turkish for Beginners” author Benedikt Gollhardt, who also wrote the script for the series, made his thriller debut in 2019 with the novel “Westwall”. He was inspired by the NSU murders as well as by the infiltration of the right-wing scene by the protection of the constitution and their controversial practice. In the ZDF series, which takes place in Cologne and was shot a year ago in Krakow, Poland, intelligence services and right-wing terrorists are closely networked.
The focus, however, is the story of two outsiders and the question of why young people slide into the right-wing extremist scene. «The children and young people are lost and are not given any love. They then meet people who give them exactly what they need: warmth, love, affection and attention, ”explains Schümann.
“Westwall” is prominently cast (in other roles: Suzanne von Borsody and Kostja Ullmann), fast and in places terrifyingly realistic. Only the danger of a possible terrorist attack by the Nazi group remains abstract and takes some of the drama out of this arc of tension.