TV best and worst of: The TV balance 2023: perfection and villainy

Mystery, empowerment, fake documentaries, coming-of-age, often as six-part films of 45 minutes each: the side arms will continue to refresh the television mainstream in 2023. Crime stories are still important, but rarely noteworthy, which is why there was more room for investigative-free experimentation on this side of the broadcast slots for chief inspectors and sergeants – both worth seeing and disgusting.

Platz 11: »Tender Hearts«, Sky

When the first of the eight episodes aired at the beginning of April, people thought: Lonely woman of tomorrow (Friederike Kempter) falls in love with love robots – wasn’t that the case with “I’m your human”? There was! But not as visionary, original, funny as in Pola Beck’s series.

10th place: “The Traitors”, RTL+

Anyone who hates board games also avoids “Cluedo,” where randomly selected players hide their identities as murderers. Anyone who hates RTL formats should also avoid “The Traitors”, where the same thing happens in the real castle. A mistake! Moderated by Sonja Zietlow, the reality version of “Cluedo” was, despite all the trash, a source of clever simulation of tension.

Platz 9: »Maestro«, Netflix

Netflix used to park high-quality films in the cinema before streaming them in order to get Oscars. With the biopic “Maestro” this was unnecessary, but it made sense. Because Bradley Cooper’s portrait of the conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein and his wife Felicia (Carey Mulligan) is such famous television that it delights on screen and screen. What masterpieces like »Nyad«»Leave the World Behind« und »The Killer« gilt.

8th place: “Mein Falke”, ARD

German TV films cannot keep up with Hollywood because of the budget. Unless they replace production quality with depth of field. Like Dominik Graf. His screamingly quiet ARD portrait with Anne Ratte-Polle as a lonely woman who “My Falcon” helps out of the hole in her life’s crisis was even more captivating than “Face of Memory”, Graf’s answer to Hitchcock’s psychodrama “Vertigo”.

7th place: “What we fear”, ZDF

So to German mystery. When Lisa (Mina-Giselle Rüffer) in Daniel Rübesam’s six-part series, despite panic attacks, always goes to exactly where the haunted place in her cursed school is loudest, even the enigmatic (of course six times 45 minutes long) ARD nonsense “Snow” seems meaningful. Both are unintentionally funny.

6th place: “We are the Meiers”, ZDF

Oh, how beautiful voluntary comedy is on the other hand – at the highest level of a fabulous art form: the mockumentary. In “We are the Meiers” stars from Matthias Matschke to Bettina Lamprecht play family members who transform every German cliché into pseudo-realistic humor.

5th place: “Ernstfall – Governing at the Limit”, ARD

Various ARD documentaries that alone justify the broadcast fee are not fake, but actually brilliant. “Ernstfall,” for example, Stephan Lamby’s three-part traffic light analysis in permanent crisis mode. Plus “Invented Truth,” Daniel Sager’s careful analysis of the Relotius affair. Or the milieu study “Echt”, in which Kim Frank analyzes the 90s using the example of his own teen band.

4th place: “Luden”, Prime Video

In the middle between truth and lies, however, stands the historytainment brand “Luden”. Filled with real neighborhood greats from the 80s, the St. Pauli series paints a dirty, sparkling moral painting on the flat screen that, despite all its authenticity, is larger than life. Just as plausibly exaggerated as “Sam, a Saxon” – the furious Disney biopic of the first black police officer to become a criminal.

3rd place: “German House”, Disney+

Historical fiction always had little to do with reality when Nazis were present, or rather: absent – it perpetuates the tale of German victims. Because “German House” is overflowing with Nazi perpetrators about the first Auschwitz trial, the drama series is therefore believable. Ingeniously, thanks to the connection between three families, it becomes a moral portrait of a forgetful nation.

Platz 2: »Boom Boom Bruno«, Warner TV

Apparently Kerstin Laudascher wants to satirize the toxic masculinity of the title character. But as compassionate as Maurice Hübner lets Ben Becker’s homophobic cowboy cop solve a murder in the drag milieu, the series is a ready-made supper for AfD and Trump fans. Six, bet!

1st place: “Dear Child”, Netflix

Isabel Kleefeld’s brilliant Netflix series “Liebes Kind” with Kim Riedle as the victim of a manipulative kidnapper with Caesar syndrome shows how male abuse of power becomes conscientious entertainment. From the script to the direction to the equipment, camera and acting, the psychological thriller scratches the dramaturgical perfection for six episodes.