Christian Meier wrote a blunt piece for WELT this morning over a TV topic.....public TV (ZDF) and their 'Dream Ship' series.
I'm a harsh critic of ARD and ZDF. I'll admit this up front.
They go and generally build a very generic series or produce a one-time 90-minute movie....off a successful book. It's designed for a older audience (usually over the age of fifty). On rare occasions....it might trend better with the 30 to 45 year old crowd.
'Das Traumschiff'? It's been around since 1981....total number of episodes? 83. Yes, it's mostly a 3 or 4 episode season....each one going for 90 minutes (no commercials).
Meier is blunt on his chat...."shallow stories". The storylines are watered down and it's mostly....the ship has some 30-minute build-up as they head toward the destination....then arrives at some exotic port, and five different dilemmas occur, then over the final twenty minutes.....they connect all the dots, and the dramas are allowed to end happily.
My wife (German) loves the show, and when a new episode does arrive....it's a must-watch evening.
I'm particular about movies....there has to be some reasonable script, and the story has to be worth telling. Das Traumschiff? I keep waiting for food poisoning to occur, pirates to board, a murder to occur, or the ships engines to fail to leave them drifting for two days until a tug can arrive. You know....the real world events that likely occur on cruises these days.
Do people watch it? They've gone to recruit a new actor to be the captain (Florian Silbereisen), with the hopes that he'll draw more of an audience, and keep the series alive. Audience now matters? Well....it's not a cheap production piece and because it's always at some exotic vacation spot.....there's a fair amount of cost to producing one single episode.
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