John Adams, 2008, HBO. I really enjoyed this miniseries, which follows the life of John Adams in the first days of the state delegations to the Continental Congress up to the 50th anniversary of the nation. Paul Giamatti stars, and Laura Linney plays a great Abigail Adams. John is shown to be a stubborn but principled statesman, hardboiled and hard to defer. A great watch if you’re interested in colonial history and the various theories that went into the drafting of our Constitution, which play out still today.
Der Tatortreiniger is a German, German-language dark comedy, chamber-play episodic series about a working-class crime scene cleaner whose interactions with the various people, gruesome corpse remnants and situations he encounters in the crime scenes sets the tone for different kinds of philosophical discussion, and the plot is often an extended inquiry and elucidation into some kind of moral problem or question the crime scene poses.
Each episode begins with Heiko Schotte, an everyday-Joe, football (not the American kind)-loving guy (who specifically supports Hamburg and who later measures the length of his life in terms of how many world cups are left) coming on scene to some crime that he didn’t investigate and the world yet knows about. And each episode deals with a different kind of moral or philosophical or comedic problem, which his conversations with the surviving members of families or people on scene or his engagement with the environment bear out. In one episode, he deals with a doomsday prepper who depletes himself in preparation for a day that may never come. In another, Heiko stumbles upon an ongoing crime scene and has a debate with the criminal about the moral rightness of his actions. In yet another, he is cleaning a cabin of various human parts, while the funeral service representatives onsite berate him into buying funeral insurance he does not want because he does not think he will die soon and doesn’t care much about it, just as two cannibals watching them from outside at a distance plan how they are going to capture and eat Heiko to get their next fix, even as Heiko ironically later on saves them. In one particularly hilarious one, he is asked to cleanup the crime scene of a neo-Nazi who has accumulated various Hitler and Nazi paraphernalia, and in his subversive, working-class way, he cleverly convinces the attendant on-site to send all of the Nazi items to the garbage dump, doing his little but important part to make the world a better place.
It’s nice to find a German-language show that doesn’t deal with World War II or the Stasi. In fact, what makes the show special is that any of us could be Heiko. He isn’t particularly successful, rich wealthy or perfect. He has a good heart and a strong sense of conscience and makes his way to work everyday. No girlfriend to speak of, he has occasional love affairs which never really pan out out. But you love the guy for who he is. In one of the first scenes of the show, he is standing on a sidewalk, talking into a video intercom and being extensively interrogated by a wealthy, elite, critical woman on the other side of the intercom who is asking him a series of questions to apprise herself of his identity before letting him into her mansion home. After the women openly states “you don’t look very educated” over the intercom, he loudly and defensively yells “My name’s Heiko Schotte, and I didn’t graduate high school!” at the top of his lungs outside a gated home on the sidewalk of a rich community just as a passerby hilariously walks by and says “that’s nothing to shout about” and walks by.
The intro theme is a simple electronic pulsating melody, which perfectly matches the mundane, routine feel of the scene playing out: Heiko Schotte driving his company car with all his crime scene cleaning implements in tow, smoking a cigarette and drinking a coffee, to the next crime scene, like every morning, like we all must do every morning, completing our morning commute.
With episodes running a half hour each, and with a diverse array of interesting characters, philosophical themes, odd problems and situations, and rich, colorful settings, this is definitely a show to catch. Only available on MHZ choice through Amazon Prime or by purchase.
Separately, I’m enjoying this opportunity to improve my German.
I really enjoyed this miniseries depicting the invasion of Iraq from the standpoint of an elite marine group. It doesn’t glorify service, but it also appreciates the struggle of soldiers (especially grunts who have to deal with near-insane officers who routinely place them in harm’s way and command structures that make little sense) and gives a fair amount of attention to the the horrors of war as far as affected local civilians go (not that I have any personal experience). It also doesn’t really take a stance on the moral rightness of the war, which is interesting: it leaves the question up to the viewer, and the soldiers themselves often find themselves asking why they are doing what they are doing. It’s a little raw though and many might find it offensive, but I liked it quite a bit.
Bearer of Pity 