This series from the early 1980ies was recommended to me by a friend, but I almost didn't make it through the first episode. Initially it's just young seamstress Ines (Elfi Eschke) who plans to explore the Ruhrpott, Germany's rust belt, on bike. Her beau, Harald (Eckhard Heise), insists on joining her, and tells his workmate, fellow railway clerk Karlheinz (Herny van Lyck), about his planned sojourn. Since "Kalle" is has failed to plan the impending family holiday for wife Lisbet (Marie-Luise Marjan) and precocious teenage daughter Martina (Klaudia Schunck), he arbitrarily decides to join in. The ragtag, and mostly unwilling, band of five set off with incredibly makeshift equipment into the great, wild, and highly urbanized yonder from Dortmund to Hünxe (a direct route of about 80 kilometers).
Written by Elke Heidenreich, this TV series is really a cinematisation and expansion of her fictional soliloquies of "Else Stratmann", a middle-aged meddling working-class wife, which was a popular radio feature at the time. But while the "Else Stratmann" rants rely on the witty and verbose description of everyday events in Ruhrpott vernacular, this charm is completely lost in the TV series. "Mother Stratmann" (Marie-Luise Marjan) in the TV series actually talks very little and is almost an innocent bystander to the struggle for independence between father and daughter. And conflicts abound during the tour, which lasts for roughly a week: Martina strives for independence from her oppressive father, who in turn struggles to keep up with his wayward daughter, Ines is unsure whether to get intimate with Harald, Harald has to deal with being kept at an arm's length by Ines, Karlheinz plans to hook up with his erstwhile paramour Klärchen, the whole region is in upheaval with mines being closed and miners being driven out of their homes.
The music by Austrian Arthur Labuer is a bizarre crossover of Kraftwerk and Gehorghe Zamfir, the production values are often somewhat lackluster, but eventually I was sucked in by the anachronistic charms of Tour de Ruhr.
