Streaming and TV outlook: “Hape Kerkeling – Totally normal”: ARD documentary for the 60th birthday

Fans of Hape Kerkeling will get their money’s worth: ARD is celebrating the comedian’s 60th birthday with a themed day that includes, among other things, the film adaptation of his childhood memories “The Boy Must Get Fresh Air” and a “Best of” of his sketches on June 9th . December. At 8:15 p.m. the 90-minute documentary “Hape Kerkeling – Totally normal”, the centerpiece of the theme day, will be shown. It can be found in the ARD media library from this Thursday (December 5th).

To Amsterdam and Recklinghausen

Kerkeling himself traveled with the two authors André Schäfer and Eric Friedler to, among other places, his birthplace Recklinghausen and Amsterdam, the homeland of his ancestors. “I was of course very excited to see what the two of them would do with it and I was more than positively surprised by the result,” he told the German Press Agency. “I’m getting to know myself all over again, because when someone else looks at you, it’s something completely different.”

The film, which is as informative as it is entertaining, traces a career that has never been seen before in Germany: Kerkeling has not only been one of the most popular TV comedians for 40 years, the one with the grease reporter Horst Schlämmer or the Düsseldorfer Taxi driver Günther Warnke created well-known characters.

He is also successful as a voice actor, lending his voice to the snowman Olaf in Disney’s “Frozen”, and he is one of the most successful non-fiction authors ever, starting with “I’m gone then” about his pilgrimage on the Way of St. James.

Particularly interesting: his former editor at Radio Bremen

Fans will be particularly pleased that numerous cult moments from Kerkeling’s 40-year career are shown again in the documentary, starting with his first television appearance as a 13-year-old accompanied by his father.

The scenes are commented on by prominent companions such as Anke Engelke, Otto, Campino, Günther Jauch and Isabel Varell, Kerkeling’s best friend. The most interesting thing, however, is to hear his former editor at Radio Bremen, Birgit Reckmeyer. With her unmistakable voice, she is an original herself, which Kerkeling parodies several times in the documentary, for which he immediately apologizes to her.

The forced outing by Rosa von Praunheim

The filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim, who outed Kerkeling as gay on the talk show “The Hot Seat” in 1991 without having discussed this with him, also has his say again in the documentary. He says: “I knew that my action was indecent, that it was a stone that I threw that also hurts.” But his aim was to demand solidarity in the AIDS crisis. Kerkeling himself says that, looking back, the forced outing was a stroke of luck for him, even if it wasn’t meant that way at the time – because it ended a game of hide-and-seek that was fraught with fear.

Only one person in the documentary says something negative about Hape Kerkeling – Horst Schlämmer: “He thinks he’s better than that. Unsympathetic – I find him unsympathetic.”