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Day 1 with the »animal enema« jungle test: Mike Heiter, Zoe Saip and Frank Fussbroich have to climb into a tank that slowly fills with water
Photo: Stefan Gregorowius / TVNOW
Tropical Island - how nice it would have been!
A coronally orphaned western town, a disused salt mine, why not a pony farm!
Even the Beelitz sanctuaries, which were burned forever TV-wise by far too many "Hu-hu, it haunted" shoots would have made a nice replacement accommodation for this year's jungle campers after the pandemic first the trip to Australia and then a production in the UK Emergency camp in Wales prevented.
Instead of repotting this year's jungle events in a strange setting and creating the 15 season as a very long motto party, it is staged as a kind of interlude, as a bridge to the next regular camp hoped for in 2022.
The twelve participants are therefore more likely to be applicants than candidates: those who remain of them after two weeks will receive a golden ticket for the next season.
This year the film is being shot in the studio in Cologne-Hürth, and in the single-player one flirts extensively with the dreariness when the first minor celebrities are brought in: Frank Fussbroich, who with his flat shadows under the eyes looks a bit like the first stage of a human-panda morphing process, model Zoe Saip, dressed like a Disney villain, plus Mike, the golden cheerful.
Otherwise nobody comes first, and that is the problem with this still very chunky-looking new hybrid format consisting of container elements and best-of indulgence.
It seems terribly as if this concept cut the best and most important part of this format.
Namely, the part in which IBES was as exciting as the socialization of still unknown Mongolian gerbils - as friends of small mammals know, is the supreme discipline of bringing animals together.
Who rubs himself up to whom, what ridiculousness is this time brewing instant hostilities, who loses his nerve at the confessional micado and first and camp-dramaturgically confesses his porn / cheese / tapir addiction at the campfire?
Thousands of small social dramas are performed in a regular jungle camp, this year the human activity has been rigorously contained: three candidates move into an 18-square-meter house for three days, after which the viewers choose one.
The remaining eight from this preliminary round then move into a semi-final, in which they are further decimated.
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Cologne instead of Australia: Sonja Zietlow and Daniel Hartwich moderate the slimmed-down jungle camp
Photo: Stefan Gregorowius / TVNOW
At least one roughly rhymes the concept, Sonja Zietlow and Daniel Hartwich don't really explain it conclusively.
And so one looks at this IBES variation with similarly reduced interest, with which Mike Heiter looks at the doorless toilet of his new tiny house residence, in which the business has to be extinguished with sawdust: "Ey gumma, watt is datt?"
It will never be so beautiful and carefree again
What surprises you most about this opening broadcast is how much you miss the ritualized IBES elements.
As if the title tune had jingled with a conditioning bell, and now you sit here, salivating like a Pavlov dog, and the treat stays away.
You love it after all, the traditional rear sight control by the rangers who look for contraband in the goblin hairdos and body folds of the candidates before they leave for camp.
You miss that one moment when, on arrival in the flatbed, with an emphatically cheerful whistle in the cellar, the irritated nerves wedge between them for the first time.
Then the petty things in the camp, the rough distribution of loungers, all the unfortunate incidents that prevent successful socialization the first time humans and mice meet.
All that is naturally missing in the show version with its studio setting and the trio-shrink constellation.
And so, at least in the opening sequence to the real jungle camp, the emergency camp behaves like a bright red colored salmon substitute for real salmon: It looks like the jungle thanks to the carefully crafted backdrop, it certainly smells similar thanks to the wooden crumb toilet instead of a water closet, but also tastes different.
It is actually rather counterproductive that an extensive review of a previous season is planned in every show, and that the opening sequence recapitulates the unreachable eighth season in small snippets.
We see the eternally glowing Larissa stumble, we see Wutfried Glatzeder in stinky boots, we relive the crocodile foot gate.
And they know painfully: It will never be so beautiful and carefree again, and this feeling has been oozing out of your ears for far too long, so generally related to life.
Even the chat guests from the retrospective season are of little help: Melanie Müller with the dark-lipped vibe of a Gothic joker, Julian FM Stoeckel as a manoeuvrable small talk slalom artist who is always able to present.
Maybe all of this will be more interesting when more material from the tiny house can be shown in the next few days.
It doesn’t only work reliably with gerbils: If there is no food, no retreat or movement, they will bite and scratch.
Of course, it would be more exciting to be able to observe these dynamics in several cages at the same time, if all three teams had been put in one house at the same time.
Then even this trio construct could be interesting, because you could see in direct comparison how the candidates form socially in this constellation: Supposedly harmonious like tick, trick and track, or more like a Freudian threesome that looks like the human Psyche split up into an instinctively emotional, a competing and coolly logical part and a part mediating between the two (as with Penny, Sheldon and Leonard in "The Big Band Theory")?
Blunt "Biste balla balla?" - rudeness
Where Zoe, Mike and Frank are going can only be guessed at from the so far very sparse material.
So far, Frank has been the overbearing uncle, who asks the nephew at the family celebration without distancing himself if he already has a Froooooindin and who tries to joke that Zoe clearly has to take over the cooking and cleaning services in the tiny house because she is ultimately a wife be, probably mean sadly serious.
When Zoe, apparently shaken by panic attacks, screeches through a comparatively simple jungle test with water and animals, Mike shows understanding and Frank shows blunt "Biste balla balla?" - rudeness.
Zoe then sits alone in the tiny outdoor area, completely sunken in her gray terrycloth bathrobe, she looked as if a depressed hotel towel figure butterfly had rather carelessly tried an armadillo, and sobbed at her absent papa for forgiveness for her failure - it was bad to watch.
It would have been interesting and informative if one had been able to see in this situation who of the candidates who had not yet appeared in solidarity with her, who would have used the first chance of being etched.
But unfortunately there is nobody else there, and when you watch this premiere show you feel like Thorsten Legat is watching most of the time.
The production hired him as a sidekick, he now stands around in the scenery a bit embarrassed and grins when he is in the picture, rigidly expectant, but without being relieved by a punch line.
As a friend of the jungle you are very concerned that the really exciting scenes can happen late, possibly too late, when the remaining eight candidates from the preliminary rounds are locked together for the last few days.
Perhaps one was at least inspired by the gerbil.
If you want to get small groups of well-known small groups used to each other, that's a really tricky thing because you first have to do a so-called odor adjustment.
A radical method: to rub the animals with already soiled bedding.
We remain skeptical.
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