Perhaps the hardest thing for actors is to play bad actors. And when a top actor like Bill Hader in his role as Barry in the series of the same name is praised for being an excellent bad actor, it also seems a little weird. It becomes even more difficult for critics when a film-within-a-film series caricatures the failure of a film-within-a-film series (including "bad acting"): Is every shortcoming, everything wooden, now a surplus?
The basic idea of Kida Khodr Ramadan's series "German Genius" is hardly new. Autobiographical sitcoms abound. Already in "Episodes" you could see "Friends" actor Matt LeBlanc playing himself in a distinctively snobbish way. The series "jerks." with Christian Ulmen and Fahri Yardim also comes to mind. Even the gigantically famous, but slightly smeared Charlie Sheen is supposed to imitate a Charlie Sheen who is working on his comeback in Doug Ellin's Hollywood meta-satire "Ramble On", which has so far only been rumored.
A complex narrative framework
Ramadan, too, now gives Ramadan with a lot of self-irony, and more unsuccessfully than it is. This has its appeal for two reasons. On the one hand, the motivation of the protagonist is striking, because Ramadan puts his "4 Blocks" image on the pointer, as ingenious as the embodiment of the Neukölln godfather Toni Hamady was, is absolutely understandable. Ramadan's half-successful neighbourhood fairy tale "No Orange Tree Grows in Berlin" (2020) can also be seen as an attempt to escape the curse. In "German Genius", "4 Blocks" fans constantly ask him for autographs and selfies. With equanimity, Ramadan fulfills the wishes, but waits for new, radiant leading roles. His agent doesn't have that on offer.
On the other hand, Ramadan associates the brash German film and television scene with the unbridled humor of Ricky Gervais. The British comedian, inventor of world successes such as "The Office", "Extras", "Derek" or "After Life", not only makes an appearance in the series, the series Kida literally peddles this rather fleeting acquaintance (Ricky also loves "4 Blocks"). The idea of the roleless ex-godfather is now to reissue the cult series "Extras" in Germany, i.e. to play an extra on the set of the real stars. With a very German twist: The stars are supposed to mime German geniuses, Goethe, Marlene Dietrich, Leni Riefenstahl. This goes down well with station editor Sabine; Christina Große plays her unimaginatively ambitious and hollowly enthusiastic; the blow sits.
So the narrative framework is pleasingly complex, adds a meta-level to "extras", but the real pound with which Ramadan proliferates is his address book: When he calls, apparently no one says no. The whole of film Germany is playing along – self-indulgent itself. Among others, Heike Makatsch, Tom Schilling, Frederick Lau, Olli Schulz, Kurt Krömer, Wim Wenders, Volker Schlöndorff, Leander Haußmann, Sascha Gersak, Teddy Teclebrhan, Marie Burchard, Thorsten Merten, Anne Ratte-Polle, Katrin Bauerfeind, Trystan Pütter, Kathrin Angerer, Marc Hosemann and Marvin Kren. The co-lead role and half the direction (alongside Cüneyt Kaya) are in the safe hands of Detlev Buck, who plays a crazy producer, while Ramadan despairs that everything is getting more expensive, but still doesn't make much of an impression and the project always starts from scratch.
German movie stars are no Kate Winslet
New directors, producers and writers are constantly being added to the series, and each time the same mess comes out in a slightly different perspective. As a biting satire on the German television business and its vanities, it has a lot going for it (script: Buck, Kaya, Constantin Lieb, Seraina Nyikos), but as an eight-part series, "German Genius" should offer more flair of its own, more dramaturgy and character magic. This was ingeniously solved in "Episodes", for example. It is only towards the end, with the increasing rivalry between the characters played by Buck and Ramadan, that a certain mood develops. Before that, the plot is reminiscent of a guest role wrestling without coherence.
Most of the scenes also seem uninspired, improvised, whether on the ostensible set or in the hammam. The narrative staggers from sketch to sketch. Although it resembles the model "Extras", it is not David Bowie, Kate Winslet or Ben Stiller who bring their aura here, but our little German film starlets who like to overplay. There are certainly gradations. Detlev Buck is on a run, Maria Furtwängler and Volker Schlöndorff seem rather strained when it comes to wit, and Daniel Kehlmann's performance – "I'm flying back to the USA next week. There's not so much envy either" – is so desolate in terms of acting that you can't even get anything out of it as a cringe comedy. The basic problem is that, apart from the names and faces, nothing is real, nothing is daring.
However, there is one actor who, in contrast to all those mentioned, plays so fabulously all around, so raw, funny, enthusiastic and believable that the actually well-written scenes in which he plays save the entire, badly tortured production from destruction: It is Momo Ramadan, Kida's real son, born in 2010, who plays his film son named Sami, a lovable rascal. Momo had already come up trumps in Ramadan's prison series "Asbestos". Sister Dunya also does a good job, and Britta Hammelstein is convincing as the tough artist's wife Karolyna. After eight episodes, it's clear: Rambazamba during Ramadans, that's the series we want to see. Even without Ricky Gervais.
German Genius airs Tuesdays at 20:15 p.m. in double episodes on Warner TV Comedy.