3 hours ago
5
A fortysomething alpha male, a sad sack, a playboy and an intellectual walk into a German sitcom. Eight episodes of Dudes ensues. I do not speak German and can only hope it plays better in the original. In fact, the original-original is a Spanish comedy called Machos Alfa. That is now into its third season, which suggests it at least had a charm that has become lost in translation.
The alpha here is Ulf (Tom Beck). He is tall, dark, handsome, high-earning, married to an increasingly influential influencer, and he and his immaculate facial hair are on the verge of promotion to CEO of the magazine publishing company he has worked at for the last 20 years. But what’s this? He is denied his dues by the advent of Vanessa (Jaëla Probst), a hot-in-all-senses businesswoman brought in from outside by the boss to shake things up. I have never seen this setup before. I hope it doesn’t cause him to quit in a childish rage and jeopardise his entire lifestyle, re-employment prospects and marriage. Oh.
The sad sack is Andi (Moritz Führmann), who is stressed at work, balding and always too tired for sex – a groundbreaking comedy trifecta if ever there was one – despite his wife Silke’s (Franziska Machens) keenness to initiate it with his stressed, balding self. The hilarity.
Playboy Erik (David Rott) meanwhile has almost the opposite problem. He is ready to give up his lover and get engaged to his long-term fiancee Kim (Marleen Lohse), the lucky girl. But she wants to open up their relationship! This revelation plays out over a dinner date in which he has – oh, the comic innovation gets everywhere! – hidden the engagement ring in her favourite pudding, but ends up having to eat it himself. Later, he has to poo it out. Try to contain your hysterical laughter. You may have had some practice already. If not, there is a scene coming up in which Andi uses a butt plug on Silke and the kids burst in, which should amply provide.
Intellectual Cem (Serkan Kaya) is divorced and his 16-year-old daughter has just announced that she is moving in with him. She puts his profile on dating apps and starts overseeing his love life to a degree that I consider worthy of the involvement of social services, but I am not a writer of a dismal sitcom purporting to examine life for middle-aged men in a glorious feminist age, so what do I know? Maybe there really are swathes of teenage girls out there telling their fathers they need to “fuck at least 10 women properly otherwise you’ll never move on”, but if so there shouldn’t be. Stop it. Put some boundaries in place, stay in your parent/child lanes, return life to its proper order and just stop it now.
Anyway. You will never guess who his first date is – only Ulf’s nemesis Vanessa! And you’ll never guess whether he panics and tells her he’s a widower instead of divorcee or not!
On and on we go, watching boring, idiotic characters do boring, idiotic things and ticking off set-pieces as we go. Silke getting drunk at a dinner party with all the friends and ranting about Andi’s lack of libido. A shrink doodling inattentively while Cem pours out his troubles. Nobody cares about men any more, you see. Ulf hitting up his contacts for work and getting nowhere (“Too old? Seriously?”, “Too manly? For real?” These are lines someone has written). He returns to the office to ask for his job back but ends up humiliating himself again. The football team they all play for keeps losing. Ah, eine metapher. A visit from Erik’s parents stymieing Kim’s wish to go to a sex party that night. Until his parents have to leave early to go to a concert. So Erik and Kim go to the sex party. You’ll never guess who they meet there. Andi and Silke are called to their children’s school because the kinder have brought the butt plug in for – well, I was going to say shits’n’giggles, but perhaps I shouldn’t.
It’s dull, it’s crass, it pulls every punch it could possibly land, it has no insight, no subtlety, no grace, no jokes – it has things that sound like jokes, are formatted like jokes and are delivered like jokes, yet are not jokes – and it makes you feel sorry for actors. And maybe Germans. I don’t know if this is the quality of television they are used to, or that they want – again, it depends on whether much is missing in translation. But I suspect not much.
