Andreas Eschbach is something like the German Dan Brown. His novel “A Trillion Dollars” (2001), which came out two years before “The Da Vinci Code,” is an experiment that plays with myths, conspiracy theories and historical facts: What would you do if you unexpectedly inherited a trillion dollars? While Eschbach turns it into a gripping business thriller in his thick book, the screenwriters Stefan Holtz and Florian Iwersen, who were awarded the Grimme Prize for “The Ibiza Affair”, elevate the material somewhat in their series version.
The six-part miniseries, in which Philip Froissant plays the Berlin bicycle courier John Fontanelli, who becomes the richest man in the world overnight, and Oliver Masucci can be seen as the diabolical IT expert Malcolm McLaine, pimps the updated story in which the climate crisis becomes the central one The problem of humanity is explained, with spectacular shots from Berlin or Florence and high-quality optics, but behind it all there is ultimately just a boring business crime story that business and economics students in particular will find exciting. (Paramount+)