Oktoberfest: Beer & Blood

...but it's pretty entertaining and an easy watch in just six episodes. The producers take some bare-bones history of the 1900 Munich Oktoberfest and gussy it up with Peaky Blinders-style violence, sex and gloriously squalid settings (as others note, production values are top notch). The storyrunners do a good job of closing off most of the plot lines by the final chapter but things end on a somewhat ambivalent note - keeping the door wide open for season 2. And please, watch it in German with subtitles - and maybe have a lager while you do.

This is not a billion $ Hollywood production. But they were able to create an 1900 atmosphere with detail and a story that keeps you enthusiastic. I expect a season 2 to come.

So this series is based on true events surrounding Oktoberfest. The pace was really good and didnt felt boring at any point. But as the title suggests its a lot of beer and blood; literal blood bath as the characters strive to find their spot on the Oktoberfest.

This is very loosely based on real events. "Loosely"? Maybe I should say infinitesimally. The character of Curt Prank is meant to have been based on that of a real person, Georg Lang, who erected the first large beer tent at the Oktoberfest. However, that person was not the first one to have had the idea of installing a large-capacity facility there, but he was more persuasive than his predecessors.

Money has been spent on this production. The sets are lavish and cover a huge area although at times one can see that the inns and attractions are simply facades - there were a few careless camera shots.

For dramatic interest, the characters and their motivations have been sensationalised. Even in turn-of-the-century Bavaria struggling under a mentally-ill king, I doubt that rich, important people could have been bumped off or beaten nearly to death without proper investigations and then repercussions.

I didn't know that, as part of its "place in the sun" that Germany had colonised Samoa. This gave an out to the murderers in the story. It's a real indictment of the times, though, in the attitudes towards the "savages" who earnt their living by pretending to be cannibals.

There's scope for a second season although I don't know if one will ever be commissioned as this was meant to be a mini-series. If one came out, I'd certainly watch.

Peaky blinders German edition! Acting,directing,cinematography superb! Artistic Post production. A real gem!