In Germany you pay 18 euros a month in tax--automatically, whether you own a TV or not--to fund public television services. In the UK, I used to pay 150 pounds a year for the same thing: roughly the same amount. Why is it, then, that German TV (or at least, German serials) is so bad? Try googling that question, and you will see we are many pondering this issue.
Among the credible answers I have noted the lack of a foreign market for German shows, comparable to that which French or English-language television can count on. Fair enough: few countries have German as a second language, and those that do--Central and South-Eastern Europe for the most part--generally also speak English quite well.
Another such ground is the demographics: German TV, as will be clear to anyone who ever watched it, is largely geared toward middle-aged and senior spectators. Hence the inane amount of Krimi and police procedurals, which decade after decade continue to pollute the German airwaves. Tatort and its numberless spinoffs are stuck in the late-70s /early-80s, following a model devoid of suspense, of action and most of all, of originality.
Nonetheless, I need to improve my German, so I am constantly scouring the listings to find something I might watch in German. Commissario Laurenti caught my attention because it is set in Trieste, that charming enclave on the Adriatic Sea where German, Italian and Slavic culture overlap. This region and the surrounding Karst have a fascinating and complex history, which could make for a great backdrop for a Krimi. It even seems that the books on which this serial is based, make a fine use of this setting.
Unfortunately the Germans did it again: they made a terrible, truly terrible mess of it all. The plot itself is interesting enough (hence my remark on the original books, which I have not read) but the whole TV-series reduces this plot to a background or an excuse for what is, first and foremost, a soap opera so ridden with 80s clichés, with wooden and monolithic characters, with mediocre camera-work and nausea-inducing dialogues that I had to pause the first episode several times because I cringed too hard.
The palm goes to Ziva Ravno, who, while acted well enough (compared to. Proteo or Bruna Marasi for example), is accompanied each time she shows up on screen by a soft-jazz soundtrack worthy of the Emmanuelle series, meant to clarify that the titular Laurenti has the hots for her. Anywhere else in Europe, such ham-fisted filming would be a parody, but not here: I don't think there is even a trace of irony. This is the sort of things my late grand-parents would have watched and enjoy. My mother, now in her seventies, would already recognise this for the embarassement that it is.
