Angela Merkel, the chancellor who led Europe’s largest economy for 16 years, has retired and returned to her village in the Uckermark region, where she plans to spend her time reading and, like any good German, taking long, pleasant walks in the woods. A contemplative life that, deep down, she doesn’t fancy at all: as soon as the body of a local aristocrat appears in strange circumstances, Merkel decides to take the reins of the investigation from the indolent local commissioner and find out who the murderer is herself. This is the premise of the first installment of Miss Merkela series of television films that premiered last year on the German channel RTL and which was offered this July, with great success, by the Italian channel Rai2.
Following in the footsteps of legendary elderly detectives such as Jessica Fletcher or Agatha Christie’s own Miss Marple – on whom the fictional Merkel draws inspiration for her sleuth alias – the former chancellor simply applies what she has learned navigating the stormy waters of politics: observing human behavior, relating concepts and applying common sense and insight to the resolution of a problem. In this case, a crime. The series adapts to the screen the character created by the German writer David Safier, who with three installments (published in Spain by Seix Barral) has become a best-seller throughout Europe. The fourth is scheduled for November, precisely when the real Merkel will present her highly anticipated memoirs.
Safier came up with the idea in late 2018, when it became known that the politician would not be running for re-election. While watching an episode of Colombo, He fantasised about what retirement would be like for the most powerful woman in Europe. Baking cakes in the comfort of her home? No, too boring. He was going to put her on the job of solving murders. Actress Katharina Thalbach, 70, gives a comical performance as Merkel, who ignores the police commissioner’s opinions – yes, even in her new life in the village, the former chancellor still wears her colourful and iconic work clothes.
Merkel the detective is accompanied on her adventures by her husband Achim (the real one, who bears a great resemblance to the actor who plays him, is called Joachim Sauer), her bodyguard Mike and her dog Helmut. In the first book, the dog is called Putin, in honour of – and revenge for – that visit to Sochi (Russia) when the Russian president, aware of the chancellor’s fear of dogs, let her enormous black Labrador loose. In the series they have decided to call him Helmut, like Helmut Kohl, another chancellor and political mentor of Merkel until she took advantage of the party financing scandal to give him the final blow.
This is not the first time that Thalbach, one of the country’s most famous actresses, has played the chancellor. She did so more than 10 years ago in a political satire called The Minister Inspired by the political career of Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, the Minister of Defence who resigned in 2011 after it was discovered that he had plagiarised his doctoral thesis. In the fiction he is a posh boy with a ridiculous name who, thanks to his contacts, is promoted to the cabinet of a chancellor who wears a black shirt. blazers colorful and her name is, ahem, Angela Murkel.
Thalbach says that since then he had been offered several times to play it again, but that he had not felt like it until the offer came from Miss Merkel. He was intrigued by the fact that he would not accept a well-paid position in a lobby or a large company, but to become an amateur detective. “I thought it was a brilliant idea. I said to myself: I have to do that,” she told RND. The actress stressed that she has a lot in common with Merkel: both were born in 1954 and grew up in the GDR.
The action takes place in the fictional town of Neu-Freudenstadt in the Uckermark region of northern Germany. The plot begins with Merkel shouting “free at last!” as she walks through the woods and is peppered with constant allusions to the real Merkel’s political career. It is about solving a mystery but above all about provoking laughter in a spectator who perfectly recognises the character. “Compared to a six-hour opera in Beijing with Xi Jinping, anything else is harmless,” she jokes about a show she attends with her husband. The script for the television version is by Stefan Cantz, known for writing several episodes of Tatortthe historic police series on German public television.
The series was released on German screens without much fanfare, but the release of the first two films dubbed into Italian has made it go viral on social media. It has been surprising to see her in scenes unbecoming of a statesman: in the first scene, bending down to pee behind a tree, or struggling with the bag to pick up Helmut’s stool while saying: “What a problem, with all the shit I had to clean up when I was in politics.”
The new exhibition of Miss Merkel It also coincided with the 70th birthday of the chancellor, who continues to cultivate the discretion she has always prided herself on. After more than 30 years of political career, many of them as a world-renowned figure, her personal life remains largely a mystery, as highlighted in a nearly three-hour documentary series recently released in Germany.
Safier, the character’s creator, has pointed out in interviews that Merkel shares two characteristics with Inspector Colombo: going unnoticed and being underestimated. That’s how her political career took off – her party colleagues disparagingly called her ‘Kohl’s girl’ – and that’s how the writer imagines her solving crimes. “I was successful in politics and science, why wouldn’t I be successful as a detective?” she asks herself in the trailer.
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