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"Celebrity Hunted" on Amazon Prime: "Doctor Wladimir Klitschko has every imaginable driver's license"

2021-12-03T18:39:53.343Z


In the new Amazon format “Celebrity Hunted”, Wladimir Klitschko, Stefanie Giesinger and eight other celebrities flee from professional investigators - that's fun because it's nonsense and serious at the same time.


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Tracking down with criminological expertise: Wladimir Klitschko tries to use as many absurd means of transport as possible

Photo: Amazon

Slapstick is always fun when those involved take it seriously. Diana is wanted, says a man in a war-room-esque multi-screen room with a deadly serious expression. "They are known as Diadem-Lori," he continues, and this already quite funny sentence becomes a little funnier because it is being spoken by General Erich Vad, Angela Merkel's former security advisor.

Ten celebrities are fleeing across Germany in the new “Celebrity Hunted” Amazon format from a common starting point in Hamburg, alone or in teams of two. They are followed by real profilers, cyber analysts, behavioral experts and other criminological professionals. Each of the hunted has only 50 euros available per day, which must also be withdrawn from an ATM, which naturally increases the risk of discovery. In professional manhunt, according to the slightly stiff opening credits, "powers of the state are reproduced", for example automatic license plate recognition, cell phone and video surveillance. Whoever successfully hides from the pros for ten days wins.

Of course, the way the detective team is staged is wonderfully nonsensical: every moment you think you're hearing the classic dup-dup-düdüüü phone ringtone of the “Counter Terrorist Unit” from the “24” series in the headquarters scenes, so much the "Celebrity Hunted" iconography corresponds to the set of the series. An expert actually resembles the "24" character Morris O'Brian, the husband of Chloe O'Brian, outwardly, the older ones will remember. All of this is a bit silly, of course, but it is also well done, as is the basically simple catch-me-if-you-can concept that quickly becomes apparent.

The format idea comes from Great Britain, there are already French and Italian adaptations, and similar to the successful Amazon format “LOL: Last One Laughing”, the entertainment depends of course on the selection of fleeting celebrities.

In the German premiere, it seems to have succeeded, as far as you can tell after the first two episodes: the tactically possibly not really savvy influencers Diana and Melisa, but also the strategically apparently highly motivated boxing world champion Wladimir Klitschko, rapper Summer Cem and actor Kida Khodr Ramadan who please don't want to be stressed while fleeing, and singer Vanessa Mai and her husband Andreas Ferber, who find their ambition and will to win directly unsympathetic, that offers potential for interesting counter cuts.

Moped escape to Horst

“Celebrity Hunted” tells a lot of little stories, which makes the format surprisingly entertaining. Because it is more interesting than the professionals' attempts to trace them, which are not always comprehensible in detail - how exactly did they get these recordings from the surveillance camera of a DB long-distance train? - are the different hiding strategies of the individual teams, each knitting their own plot with an individual mood color.

You follow the actors Tom Beck and Axel Stein as they seemingly haphazardly chugging their escape on a troubled moped and have to laugh about it themselves when they stand under a bus stop sign in the municipality of Horst - suits them, they are.

You watch Summer Cem and Kida Khodr Ramadan in their rather dignified escape variant, whose dialogues are reminiscent of a classic crook comedy: "I never understood Mate, brother." And is happy with model Stefanie Giesinger, who plans her escape as a smart disguise comedy , about her successful camouflage and deception maneuver, with which she can shake off her pursuers because they would have underestimated her cleverness.

"Strong like a bear, agile like an octopus"

Television is always successful when there is space for the audience. In “Celebrity Hunted” there are many gaps in which you can think for yourself: Which team would you most like to be on the run with? How would you as an opponent approach the persecution - and who would you, on the other hand, choose as your escape helper?

With all this, a running gag is Klitschko's ambition to use as many, as absurd as possible means of transport.

The voice-over says the wonderful sentence "Doctor Wladimir Klitschko has every imaginable driver's license", which does not seem to be a lie, and so he is in the air and under water like a mobility-flexible Bond villain - or, as he himself says: "Strong like a bear, agile like an octopus. ”If at some point during the six episodes he didn't throw himself off a tall building in a flying squirrel suit, it would be a real disappointment.

Source: spiegel

All life articles on 2021-12-03

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