Alerta Cobra

Hey, it's pure escapism. Sure it's not real... but it's fun, and has better stunts than the average Hollywood action movie.

Then again, I'm probably prejudiced, because I live an hour's drive away from where the bulk is filmed, and It's a nice change to see my neck of the woods the location of exaggerated car stunts and full-auto shootouts instead of Los Angeles.

The makers are quite aware of the ridiculousness, given the amounts of in-jokes regarding Autobahn locations (most of them the standard rush-hour traffic jams you would know from such radio stations as the WDR2) that everyone here knows, though they do not look remotely like the real thing.

This series is great! Yes, it has plot holes you could hide a city in. (Not a small one.) Yes, it alway, always starts with a huge, huge crash on the autobahn, were miraculously nobody gets hurt. The acting is often bad, and the subplots obvious, to say the least. But it's fun anyway. It has the sort of charisma usually connected with the shows you watched as a kid (Knight Rider, A-Team) which plots were silly but who where great too watch. And all the Hollywood clichés used- that's just great. Just expect nothing in the line of plot and some great stunts and I promise you'll be satisfied. Most of all, this series is lovingly done, something which isn't always (or mostly) the case with German TV series.

I'm from the German part of Italy, and I used to watch this show every week. I really like it. Of course, some parts are not real (ok, most of the show is not real) but the action scenes are really good. Also, don't forget that most movies are not real either, so don't pick on THIS show.

One of the first episodes of Cobra 11 I can reminisce, featured a police car hitting an anchor hanging down a bridge over the Autobahn. It's still one of the best stunts I've ever seen.

"Alarm für Cobra 11 - Die Autobahnpolizei" is a typical German 'krimi' (whodunnit), with a bit more action involved. Truckloads of cars are scrapped in various action scenes. It's not useful to the story at all, and regularly I get the idea that some stunts are just done for the mere fun of it. Apparently, a simple accident involving only two cars is not enough for Cobra 11's stunt crew, so why not crashing the rest of the entire Autobahn into them? And when all these nutters come to a halt just in time, why not fail the brakes of an oncoming truck so the highway will turn into a scrapyard anyway? To hell with realistic action sequences - who cares that cars don't explode in real life?

Cobra 11 has started another season when I write this, and it seems that the stunt team has taken over the scriptwriting. The two hero-like highway coppers seem to have only one goal in their lives: catching the bad guys at all costs. Shooting at thugs in crowded areas, pushing innocent cars off the road when in a high speed chase, nicking other people's cars to go after thugs, scrapping that very car stupidly so the thugs can flee unscathed, crashing the unmarked patrol car into market stalls, dustbins, billboards or other cars - it's all in the game, apparently. The plot holes are as big as Jupiter, the continuity goofs are innumerable, and so are the clichés: all the gang lords drive American cars or Jaguars, the Yakuza - when featured - drive old Z31 Fairladies, cars with caravans are always fitted with Dutch license plates and all tanker trucks featured are doomed to explode.

(And yet it's still fun to watch, just because of the action.)

"Alarm fur Cobra 11" (Emergency for Cobra-11) is a popular German TV cop series that is running on the TV station RTL since 1996 with great success. It shows the cases of two highway patrol officers, played by Turkish actor Erdogan Atalay (probably because many young Turks are into high-speed BMW and Mercedes sedans) and his handsome buddy Rene Steinke, his third companion in this series.

These cops usually meet all the evil men somewhere on the German autobahns which leads to spectacular car chases with big crashes and explosions and people dying at least two or three times during each 45-minute episode. It's all very influenced by modern Hollywood action cinema or Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay and sometimes appears like a prime time TV version of "Speed", "Con Air", "Die Hard" and the "Lethal Weapon" series.

The best about this series are the two main actors, the often funny dialogues (often inspired by Mel Gibson and Danny Glover) and the usually thrilling and sometimes weird plots with plenty of references to well-known movie genres. There are ninja killers murdering innocent victims on highway bridges. There is a handicapped "Phantom of the Opera" living in an empty garage besides a lonely highway, running amok on the the autobahn with guns and bombs. There is a femme fatale, killing Ferrari drivers as she was a rape victim years before, and there is a gang of bank robbers sieging the cops in a lonely forest house just like John Wayne in "Rio Bravo".

At its best, "Cobra 11" is thrilling and sometimes even outstanding German TV action entertainment. At it's worst, it's just a repetition of the same flying BMW cars exploding somewhere on the highways. There are also too many goofs in it, with cars changing it's model and design within seconds or with unreal facts like times and distances.

But during this weekly action overkill, nobody really cares about a BMW 3 changing into a BMW 2 during a salto mortale, so sit back and relax with the autobahn cops meeting the most unusual horrors on the German highways to hell.