Lack of poor people: TV always rich: Where is social criticism in series?

Crime series, crime series, crime series – and here a home series and there a hospital soap: this rather monotonous impression of the fictional program on German television can be created quickly.

If there is a so -called social series with poorer people and cliché -free figures at eye level, then the excitement is quickly quite great that there can still be something like this.

Most recently, this was the case with the foot care salon dramedy “Marzahn Mon Amour” with Jördis Triebel in the leading role, before for example in 2021 at the single parent mini series “Tina Mobil” with Gabriela Maria Schmide.

That spectators are close to the everyday life of a normal family with little income, which is rarely happening.

In “Marzahn Mon Amour” the “Beauty Oase Marzahn” is about that the operator may not and cannot increase the prices for foot care – because of its clammy customers. But this is exactly what brings her into existential needs as an entrepreneur. A social dilemma.

In German series, the action almost always plays in the middle or upper class, where the thought of the next SUV purchase is closer than considering whether a vacation trip could be possible again. If you like, there is chronic lack of lower part in the better earning TV.

It used to be different – at least felt. Think of series such as “Three Women from the Grill” and “on axis”, who worked like the TV afternoon of the socially critical films by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Later there was also “the caretaker”, “Ritas world”, “everything atze”, “para – we are king” – and of course the “Lindenstrasse” for decades.

“Falling number of genre productions”

Poverty or average earnings often only serve as a vehicle for comedy on television – or for the mandatory crime story. It seems that television in neoliberal times has outsourced poor people as demonstration mass in RTLZWEI social reports – and in reality shows.

“A falling number of genre social drama is determined on traditional television,” says media scientist Joan Bleicher. “However, socially critical elements can be found in other genres. Crime series such as the” crime scene “or crime series such as” emergency call harbor edge “or” Großstadtrerevier “, which repeatedly draw attention to current social problems in the form of crime cases.”

However, other series conveyed “more realistic emotional social kitsch”, as the Hamburg professor Bleicher calls it. “With various medical series, the ZDF series” Spring “or the ARD series” The three of the garbage disposal “there are simple solutions for social problems. Unfortunately, they have little to do with reality.”

While the cinema still sometimes tells social substances (“system sprinkler”, “The Teacher Room”), in classic German TV there are often only high -gloss people in large houses and apartments.

Problems here are more of a strenuous long -distance relationship and silly jealousy than inflation and poor health care.

The rightly celebrated screenwriter Laila Stieler (“Rabiye Kurnaz against George W. Bush”, “Gundermann”, “Die Friseuse”) made her own experience with the TV company as the author of the series “Tina Mobil”: “The problem that more and more people despite the many work that eats all the time does not earn enough, she says.

Figures whose life is dominated by existence pressure are rare

“The” Tina Mobil “series via a mobile bakery seller reached fantastic number of spectators a few years ago.” She is still being asked about Tina today, says Stieler. “The ARD did not want to and could not afford a second season. But where are they, the Tina, in the program of public television?

In her village in the Uckermark there is no consumption, no point of sale, explains Stieler. “Until a few years ago, a bakery car with bread, rolls and the most necessary came three times a week. This is now history. The baker’s mobile did not get through the TÜV and the committed seller went into the deserved early retirement.”

And what do you have in the village now? “What’s next for us? With those who have no car, no driver’s license, no time for thinned and lengthy public transport?”