Television by Committee

ZDFneo set up this thing called TVLab where viewers vote on which pilots get to continue. I spent an evening watching the ten episodes because I was bored and curious what a network nobody can actually watch was planning to make.

German Angst is Micky Beisenherz thinking sketches can cure racism. There’s something there—the paranoia, the casual xenophobia—but every joke gets its teeth pulled before it lands. And anyway, the people drowning in actual German Angst will never find this show because ZDFneo broadcasts into a void. It’s the worst kind of satire: singing to people who already agree.

Sarah Kuttner got bounced between channels for years, and now Bambule is basically just her being Sarah Kuttner on television for thirty minutes. Sounds like self-absorbed hell, and mostly it is, but it’s also just Berlin—the trams, the wine bars full of tourists, the underground music people. You hate it immediately if you don’t live there. If you do, something in it just clicks.

Hand puppets. René Marek made Ausgekuschelt! which is hand puppets fighting each other. The concept—celebrities in plush form scrapping—is almost clever. But I hate hand puppets the way some people hate insects. They make my skin crawl. They’re right there between clowns and roadkill on my list of television horrors.

Scharfe Hunde was winning votes when I checked, which I couldn’t explain. The setup’s fine—cop show gets a new partner, has to solve real cases—but everything else is limp. Wrong casting, zero tension, a pacing so flat my cousin could build something better with markers. They should just bring back Dr. Psycho with Christian Ulmen and call it even.

Nilz Bokelberg’s Moviacs was the one that actually felt like something real. Him and Donnie O’Sullivan trying to make movie conversation feel like actual life again instead of consumer content. Hating the blockbusters, riffing on films. The pilot’s rough around the edges—you watch early GameOne now and want to throw a Dreamcast out a window—but there’s permission there to be strange and real.

Tedros Teclebrhan doing stand-up in Teddy’s Show makes sense until nobody laughs. A couple of polite smiles. He’s trapped somewhere between a Dave Chappelle impression and a regional circuit comedian, which is not the middle of anything good.

Wie geil ist das denn? sends Caro Korneli through bucket-list items—ride a tank, get wild, whatever. She’s easy to like and the whole thing is warm, but there’s nothing in it for me. Watching her tick off the production-meeting checklist while I eat fries doesn’t make me want to get off the couch. The concept would run out of steam before episode two anyway.

Neoexplorer actually had a real idea. Two people traveling around the world, iPad viewers texting them where to go and what to eat. It’s modern and strange, the internet talking directly to the present moment. But the hosts are dull as paint, and the budget had to come from somewhere shady.

Bullshit is three guys pranking people in the city center. That’s it. The concept collapses immediately. Nothing lands.

Then Liebe auf Speed, which is speed dating with hidden cameras or MTV garbage or something. Dating shows are television’s radioactive waste. Herzblatt was fine when we were kids, and everything since has been a poisoning of the format. MTV did this. I’d probably date host Jeannine Michaelsen just to make a point philosophically, but I wouldn’t watch the show.

Moviacs won, which felt right or at least less wrong. Television voting for television is still just television—committees deciding art. But something that could actually matter made it through, which is more than usually happens.