A crime has occurred in the heart of old Europe. Technically some guy was killed, but the real crime might be the new German-made TV show Miss Merkel, where (and I kid you not) the former German chancellor Angela Merkel passes her well-earned retirement solving crimes. It’s cosy, it’s Agatha Christie-like, even if political opponents of the lady herself might have found her tough as old boots she’s lovable here. So far Hamburg’s RTL has filmed two of bestselling German “krimi” author David Safier’s novels featuring Fraulein Merkel. Think Miss Marple or Jessica Fletcher, only more German.
It might be that Miss Merkel is a rather localised taste – it’s been shown initially in Germany and recently RAI TV dubbed it into Italian. I persuaded a friend in Italy to watch it. We may not be friends anymore! After sitting through the first episode, she emailed – ‘In two words: super trash.’ Perhaps it’s the nuance. Safier is a writer known for rather absurd premises. His debut novel Bad Karma was about a successful but unscrupulous TV presenter who is crushed to death by falling debris from a Russian space station the same night as she wins a TV award she has long coveted. His second novel, Jesus Loves Me, was about a woman who falls in love with a man who seems too good to be true – he is actually Jesus at the start of his second coming. Then there’s Muh! about a German cow who knows she is destined for the slaughterhouse and ultimately bratwurst but who decides to change her fate and escape to India where she thinks she will be sacred. So perhaps Angela Merkel solving murders is not such a stretch for Safier.
Miss Merkel and the Murder in the Castle sees the former chancellor retired after 16 years of leadership to the countryside in Uckermark (which is really in the northeastern part of Brandenburg and where Merkel apparently really does have a holiday home). She lives with her husband Joachim Sauer (a German quantum chemist who really is Mr Merkel), her dog (a pug called Putin), and her bodyguard Mike. Bored, away from the cut and thrust of global politics, European Union wrangling, and dealing with the minutiae of German politics, Frau Merkel starts investigating local murders. She attends a social event at the schloss of a rather unpopular aristocrat, Baron Philip von Baugenwitz. He, unsurprisingly in this genre, gets bumped off by a poisoner. Frau Merkel steps in, much to the chagrin of local police commissioner Herr Hannemann who thinks retired German Chancellors should stay out of German homicides. If you’ve watched your fair share of British style cosies then you might like this – there is some humour, a couple of dog poo jokes, and a neat resolution. Next week: Miss Merkel and the Murder in the Cemetery. There is apparently a third episode – Miss Merkel and the Murder on the High Seas – being filmed. Whether or not there will be further after that Miss Merkel’s depends on how the first three are received. David Safier has now written four books in the series.
Still, it’s hard to fault the actress Katharina Thalbach who plays the lead role. Precisely the same age as her character (both were born in 1954), Thalbach also grew up in East Germany in the old days of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Thalbach is a highly respected stage and screen actresses mostly working in Hamburg and Berlin. One of her early appearances was in the acclaimed 1979 German adaptation of Günter Grass’s The Tin Drum, considered one of the country’s most important films. Merkel’s husband Joachim, who plays a sort of Doktor Watson to her Herr Holmes, is played by another veteran GDR actor Thorsten Merton.
German audiences have apparently liked the series though (as my Italian correspondent would attest) other markets may not take to the show so quickly. The Germans have enjoyed the humour – Merkel moaning that she’s always left cleaning up other people’s messes, taking a pee behind a tree mid-investigation, being saved by her bodyguard Mike, late night snacking. But what Miss Merkel herself thinks of Miss Merkel remains unclear, the former Chancellor has maintained a stolid silence so far.
But, all indications are that she might be tuning in despite famously saying in 2021 her retirement would be just about ‘reading and sleeping’ . What you may not know is that former Chancellor Merkel is a crime fan. She’s appeared on a couple of German language true crime podcasts and is a “superfan”, perhaps the most famous superfan, of the UK TV show Midsomer Murders (which is similar in tone to Miss Merkel), the long running cosy where a startling number of killings occur in a charming village on a weekly basis. In a 2010 attempt to foster better Anglo-German relations then UK prime minister David Cameron presented her with a box set of the series. Merkel stood down and retired in 2021, presumably to catch on the latest shenanigans in Midsomer.
This does all seem a new departure. Famous people solving crimes is nothing new. Crime writers have enlisted Dickens, Vermeer, Oscar Wilde, Jane Austen as well as all the Brontë sisters over the years. Admittedly, politicians are perhaps a bit tougher to make lovable and smart! Still, we have had Abraham Lincoln battling vampires and Bill Clinton (with James Patterson) knocked out a couple of second-rate thrillers presumably encouraging his wife Hilary to collaborate with Louise Penny. But so far we’ve never had a major political leader as a crime solver on screen. Could Miss Merkel start a new trend – Emmanuel Macron (suggested as perhaps Hercule Macron on France TV recently) foiling jewel heists on the Riviera? Boris Johnson wisecracking in ancient Greek and Latin while solving murders in Oxfordshire? (don’t laugh one British TV exec commented he thought Boris’s predecessor Teresa May might make a good TV detective), or perhaps Barack and Michelle chasing serial killers from state-to-state (why not, they have a Netflix deal!). Not forgetting that whatever happens this year Joe Biden goes into retirement and could make a cool PI in his trademark aviator shades.
I think, in general, my Italian friend (who loyally watched Miss Merkel from start to finish) was probably right that Miss Merkel is ‘super trash’, but that’s not to say it’s not entertaining for an hour of two – if you’re German.
