The idea is good: Kida Ramadan basically plays himself – the star who wants to step away from his “4 Blocks” role and produce a series inspired by Ricky Gervais’ “Extras”. He has an incompetent, but optimistic producer at his side (a bit too pompous: Detlev Buck), while his family is rightly skeptical – and the television system, in which so many have a say in decisions without being honest with each other, can of course only work anyway , if someone is unscrupulous enough. And Ramadan may mimic the tough, but here it is shown above all as a sweetheart. So it’s a meta-series, so to speak, that criticizes its own mechanisms: Why does everything always have to be super-original, how far can serial narration, modern “storytelling” go, what’s the point of all that shit anyway?
To also call this satire “German Genius” and to let Einstein and Goethe appear: Sounds like great gag potential. However, Ramadan lacks the slapstick skills of Bastian Pastewka and his courage to expose himself in a sympathetic way, but also the audacity of Ricky Gervais, who makes everything much more brutal. Ramadan always plays the nice guy here, a bit irresponsible, but still kind of lovable. Actually, everything here is “somehow”: somehow entertaining, somehow funny, somehow chic. But nothing right. No grotesque, just a grotesque. And all the overexcited celebrities (that’s great: Tom Schilling, Olli Schulz, Wim Wenders, Heike Makatsch, Maria Furtwängler) don’t distract enough from the fact that the story doesn’t quite work out in the end. “Far too much verbal ballast!” Volker Schlöndorff exclaims once – but that’s not the problem. It would take more determination. Maybe ask Tony Hamady! (WarnerTV Comedy)
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