Series Mania: ‘Wild Republic,’ ‘Deutschland89’ Among Coming Next Lineup (EXCLUSIVE)

Leo Barraclough
·5 min read

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Four upcoming premium drama series from German production companies—“Deutschland89,” “Wild Republic,” “Algiers Confidential” and “MaPa”—have been selected for Coming Next, a section that forms part of Series Mania’s Forum program. German Films, an agency that promotes Teutonic film and TV productions, compiled the selection.

“Wild Republic” takes place at an institution at the foot of the Alps, where young offenders are undergoing an experiential educational program intended to re-socialize them. When a member of the program dies a violent death—although nobody knows exactly what happened—the youths face a difficult decision: Should they wait for the authorities to recover the body and investigate the crime, or escape and take their fate into their own hands?

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The eight-part show, produced by Nils Dünker, was written by Jan Martin Scharf, Arne Nolting and Klaus Wolfertstetter, and directed by Markus Goller and Lennart Ruff.

Dünker tells Variety that the series will evoke empathy for the outcasts as was the case with Spanish series “Money Heist.” “You will fall in love with every single one of them,” he says. “They deserve to be recognized, they deserve to be loved.”

One feature of the show will be “very elaborate flashbacks that are thrown into our narrative,” Dünker says. These illuminate the backstory of each offender and “through the flashback you learn a completely new aspect of that persona, and you can’t help but look at that person from then on a bit differently,” he says.

The series is produced by Lailaps Pictures and co-produced by X Filme Creative Pool, and is being sold by Beta Film. Deutsche Telekom’s OTT service MagentaTV has taken the first window in Germany, with ARD and Arte taking the second window.

Cold War spy thriller “Deutschland 89” is the third and concluding season of the successful series from co-creators Anna Winger and Jörg Winger, which started with “Deutschland 83” and was followed by “Deutschland 86.” The new season opens with the fall of the Berlin Wall, and over the course of the next eight episodes we follow East German spy Martin Rauch, played by Jonas Nay, as he and his fellow agents scramble to cope with the end of the communist regime.

Rauch, pursued by Western spy agencies, must go undercover to infiltrate an anti-imperialist terror cell. After uncovering a terrorist plot, Rauch is determined to bring the perpetrators to justice, and finish this—his last—job.

“These episodes explore the theme of reinvention—how a country saw its way of life come crashing down overnight and then had to build a new future—a story still unfolding,” according to a statement from production company UFA Fiction.

The show is being sold by Fremantle International. Broadcasters and platforms on board include Amazon in Germany, Austria, India and Japan, Channel 4 in the U.K., Canal Plus in France, Italy’s Sky Italia, and Sundance TV and Hulu in the U.S.

In four-part thriller “Algiers Confidential,” political corruption is revealed after a German arms dealer is kidnapped in Algeria—not by Islamists, as was first suspected, but by a group of idealistic Algerians fighting for democracy.

The action, which is set in North Africa and Germany, centers on the love story between a patriotic Algerian prosecutor, herself the victim of the violence that has torn her country apart, and a German police officer trying to track down the kidnappers without authorization.

Along the way we are introduced to a colorful cast of sinister characters – black marketeers, CIA operatives, jihadists, government ministers and bureaucrats in Germany and Algeria, Algerian police and special service units, moles, double agents and escort boys. We learn that nothing is what it seems, every action has unforeseen consequences, and no one escapes unscathed.

The German-French show, written by Abdel Raouf Dafri and Oliver Bottini, was produced by Mario Krebs for Eikon, Philippe Alessandri for Watch Next Media, and Balthazar de Ganay. It was ordered by Arte in France, and ZDF and Arte in Germany, and is being sold internationally by About Premium Content.

Dramedy “MaPa” centers on Metin—played by Maximilian Mauff (“Bridge of Spies”)—after he loses the woman who was the love of his life, but also his partner in childrearing. It tells the story of how becoming a single parent of a one-year-old morphs Metin’s relationships with the various people in his life—friends, family, and colleagues—and asks the question: What makes a so-called “modern man”?

The six-part show was created by Alexander Lindh, and written by Lindh, Donna Sharpe, Luisa Hardenberg, Jano Ben Chaabane and Daniel Hendler. It was ordered by German AVOD platform Joyn and German broadcaster RBB, and is being sold internationally by Beta Film. It is produced by Laura Bull for Readymade Films.

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