De Volta à Terra

Summary

The Swiss series New Heights effectively intersects the family drama with the corporate world, the conflicts between family and industrial farming, the pressures of local interests, and the opposition between semi-rural and urban cultures over the fate of a farm near Zürich.

Review

The inheritance and fate of a farm near Zürich gives rise to complex and shifting conflicts between members of a family.

The Wys run an old-fashioned dairy farm called Neumatt (original title of the series). One of the sons, Michi (Julian Koechlin), pursues a promising career as a consultant in Zürich; His sister Sarah (Sophie Hutter) runs a gym in the town near the farm, and his younger brother, Lorenz (Jérome Humm), is the one who seems destined to carry on the family tradition, graduating from an agricultural school. But when the family must meet to decide the future of the farm, a series of conflicts over competing interests are unleashed, generating shifting alliances between its members, as if it were a petit bourgeois Succession. This new dynamic will also stir up and bring to light some family secrets.

At the same time, Michi's consulting firm is working to save a large Swiss dairy company from bankruptcy, which introduces us to corporate dealings related to the dairy industry. In this way, Nuevas Alturas effectively crosses the family drama with the corporate drama, the conflict between family and industrialized agriculture and the pressures of local interests as well as the semi-rural culture with the urban.

With a beginning that threatens to be a thriller, the series outlines its characters very well (sometimes contradictory, sometimes unscrupulous) and confronts them with situations that seem to have no way out but that they later overcome thanks to a generally well-thought-out script. The protagonist, Michi, is the ambitious, impulsive and moody successful gay consultant who is suddenly forced to combine his corporate work with a return to the family farm. But perhaps the most captivating character in the series is Katharina, his mother, in a formidable work by Rachel Braunschweig.

The plot is good and solid, the father dies and leaves a farm. A conflict breaks up among the inheritors, the wife and each son fight for their own selfish interest. The chraracters are good, the acting fine, and the rythm appropriate to allow the viewers to absorb everything and enjoy the drama but then there are a couple of brisk turn of events on the story that look out of pace and tarnish all the good creative job done particularly near the ending. At the first episodes I was wondering if the Imdb average low score was unfair and misleading but after I finished the series I realized why.

The first few episodes are pretty good, but halfway through the season, you realize they are going to stretch out the plot that's been already exhausted into 8 episodes and that's when it gets downhill. The character development was also questionable and some decisions that were made often didn't result from the character arc, so it was very disappointing to see the plot go some ways where you know that the character is going against his character arc. Some characters were too flat and one-dimensional and their decisions were again not backed by anything and it all looks like wishful story writing with some cringe scenes.

By the end of it, I couldn't wait for it to finish.

Interesting series set on a farm struggling for economic survival, owned and managed by an extended family determinedly tearing itself apart. I know more about milk production and corporate finance now than I ever expected (or wanted) to. That part of it did get rather boring and repetitive, and the details of the financial issues difficult to follow. The main character, a gay coke snorting financier, was well played, but the character was rather unlikeable, and it was difficult to see why his boyfriend put up with so much crap from him for as long as he did. I have only watched series one, and this review is limited to that.

To be honest, this is an incredibly soapy, over the top, at times implausible, family drama. But what can I say? I still had great fun watching it. With all their downsides, the plot and the characters are relatable and great acting all around helps a lot. Plus, the production values are impecable, the details of country life are well portrayed (both its refreshing down-to-earthness and sometimes unbearable claustrophobia) as is the ridiculous posturing of a Zurich consulting firm. Be careful if you plan to watch it with young teenagers regardless of the + 13 rating. The erotic scenes (more precisely, homoerotic) are very explicit.