Review by Ehrgeiz

"Kir royal" is a German TV series about the mishappenings of society reporter and major douche bag Baby Schimmerlos (Franz Xaver Kroetz). Unfortunately it ran only for six episodes but is still regarded high by critics and the few people who saw it. And rightfully so. This series, made over 20 years ago, has still such a quality, that it makes me really angry that our TV is filled with so much mediocre stuff especially regarding series and made-for-TV movies. In a way, even in international standards, it was ahead of its time. 12 years older than Americas "South park" it featured portions of the gross out humor and touchy subjects. For the time, it was quite graphic, showing a homosexual couple lying in the bed in the second episode and in a later episode even the main actors penis. Baby Schimmerlos, greatly played by Franz Xaver Kroetz, is the reporter who loves to dig in the dirt and would do anything for stories featuring the rich and mighty. Senta Berger plays his beautiful wife Mona, who is regularly mistreated by her husband and is kind of the good conscience in the story. Herb (Dieter Hildebrandt) is Baby's photographer who seems to be nicer on the surface, but is even more amoral and cynical. Edda (Billie Zöckler) is his wise, loyal but outspoken secretary. Frau von Unruh (an also excellent Ruth Maria Kubitschek), is the somewhat naive chief editor of the newspaper, who loves dirty stories as much as to keep the image of the newspaper clean. The greatest performance was done by Kroetz himself, who had the difficult task to make the viewer sympathize with the highly unsympathetic and shallow "Baby". The series was not only bold in having a dirty language and such. In many ways, it was a satire about German-style corruption of the rich and mighty which was kind of widespread in the mid-80ies. Some of the characters Schimmerlos deals with are thinly veiled counterparts of real life personalities, like Consul Weyer, a then famous strange salesman and likely betrayer where you could buy nobility titles, in the 3rd episode. The only thing I did not like was the ending. The sixth episode was weaker and it kind of ended disastrous for the main character Schimmerlos. Unfortunately, the series was never picked up, but director Helmut Dietl and writer Patrick Süskind tried to use the formula several times later - but never to the efficiency of "Kir Royal."