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Tommi Schmitt: Shrink Late Night format »Studio Schmitt«
Photo: Joachim Gern / dpa
The funniest idea is the micro-appearance of Glencheck influencer Joe Laschet as the cloakroom messiah.
In the opening clip, Tommi Schmitt stumbles into his new television engagement, flanked by celebrities rushing by.
There he lets a Laschet appearance adjust his collar in between and otherwise continues to serve the flirtatious admission that he never actually wanted to step in front of the camera.
So far you have only heard his gags from Schmitt when he worked as an author for Luke Mockridge and Klaas Heufer-Umlauf's “Late Night Berlin”, among others, or his voice when he talked to comedian Felix Lobrecht through the highly successful buddy podcast “Mixed Hack "buddy.
Now he is trying his hand at the half-hour shrink late night format »Studio Schmitt« on ZDFneo as a holistic show person.
The Zuppel scene with Laschet fits well as a brief symbolic image for his first program, which Jan Böhmermann inherited the slot on Thursday evening, which became free when he switched to the ZDF main program.
There is still a lot to jerk and straighten out here, as is almost always the case with such formats, the first attempt, although tailor-made by specialists and of good quality, is not really yet.
Hastily swept through
Even Schmitt's kick-off stand-up fires gags like a wildly scattering shotgun: The semi-shiny dream ship silver trip, cannabis legalization in New York, racist cops, vaccinated Russian pets and quarantine for Mallorca vacationers are hastily organized without any real timing dramaturgy, sometimes Schmitt rushes through puns and jokes as if he were reciting a very long, memorized poem whose declamation threatened to tip over at the slightest pause.
In fact, you may be missing a more chunky dose due to well-practiced laughs.
The complete absence of reactions, even if they were only simulated, is doubly irritating because Schmitt finally came on stage to applause.
His stand-up, which fades away in silence, seems a bit as if a fictional, but completely unmoved audience was following him.
The stand-up part is followed by a single clip, two voices wrestling in Schmitt's head with sometimes very stale opinions on the audible gender-speaking pause, without Schmitt's own attitude, which would have been of interest to you, shining through.
Then the talk part follows: with Sabine Rückert, deputy editor-in-chief of “Zeit” and operator of the crime podcast “Zeit Verbrechen”, surprisingly no expected bubble specie drops by, that's on the one hand pleasant, on the other hand the conversation remains very pale, although Schmitt in this part appears much more natural and confident than in stand-up.
But much more than an impressive warning about the dangers of hitchhiking doesn't really get stuck.
Too much happens first, then too little happens
Schmitt asks friendly Charmier questions and wants to know how Rückert maintains her curiosity and whether she wanted to become a journalist again under today's conditions.
In view of the almost bizarrely booming crime genre in podcasting, it would have been more interesting, for example, to ask how entertaining other people's spoilage should actually be, or what really useful psychological effects such podcasts could have.
Instead, there is a quick question and answer session with artifacts such as "What color is the wind?" , and in which the author in this part was in most cases much more painful and agile than Schmitt.
In summary, one could say about the »Studio Schmitt« premiere: First too much happens, then too little.
"It's just a show," Schmitt himself said in the introduction.
The further consequences will show whether this calmness can also be something positive.