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Linda Zervakis and Matthias Opdenhövel: Could still be really good.
Photo: Benedikt Müller / ProSieben
Wolfgang Kubicki is grumbling in the back of the large-capacity taxi and looks like grandpa, whom one would rather have quickly driven back to the nursing home before he ruins the family celebration with his bad mood.
Kubicki, FDP top candidate in Schleswig-Holstein for the federal election, was buckled here by the ProSieben team to the speed dating appointment with voters.
Sometimes the old man frees himself on the tour to devour a currywurst or run to the men's room in the Adlon, but most of the time he grumbles at his younger counterpart in the open-plan taxi.
For example about the billions that Andi Scheuer "screwed up", or about the Bundeswehr, which was "executed" by Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer.
Kubicki talks like a rusty guillotine.
Lightning clearance for the political clown
Passenger exchange, Hubertus Heil gets in. Kubicki previously gave the Waldorf, but Heil does not want to be a Stadler. Then dear statesman, even in a comedy taxi. The back seat is far too tight for the bulky SPD labor minister, but he actually dislocates his forehead with a brooding hand while he talks to a pleasantly pissed-off DJ about emergency aid and tries to convey his idea of a social citizen's allowance to a student. Then a quick farewell fist and fade-out.
The lightning-fast handling of professional long-time babblers is of course beneficial in a time when epic campaign chatter has to be survived almost every evening in any broadcaster. Also at ProSieben, where ex- »Tagesschau« spokeswoman Linda Zervakis will lead the next election triall on Sunday. In her new society magazine, which she will host every week with her colleague Matthias Opdenhövel, who has also escaped from ARD, she wants to deliver upscale infotainment.
It's a lot easier than it sounds.
Because trying to bring difficult information and easy conversation together can go terribly wrong.
And that is currently being tried on all private channels.
They all want to be more relevant now, but they also want to continue to sell advertising, and that works better in a good mood.
Jan Hofer, another “Tagesschau” fugitive, fell into the infotainment trap four weeks ago when he promised in his new program “RTL Direkt” to send his audience to bed “with a smile” on that very evening. when the Taliban conquered Kabul.
Afghanistan back in prime time
And so you saw »Zervakis & Opdenhövel. Live «with skepticism because the great Afghan pop singer Aryana Sayeed was announced there to report on her escape from the Taliban and her fight for women's rights. The artist said that the Taliban wanted to cut off her head because she appeared in casting shows based on Western models in her country; for example in “The Voice”, whose German offshoot was on ProSieben.
Almost 25 minutes, as long as a whole "RTL Direkt" broadcast including the final gag, tells Aryana Sayeed alongside the Yezidi women's rights activist Düzen Tekkal from the Defend Afghan Womans Right organization.
The length is crucial.
The questions from Zervakis and Opdenhövel are simple, but not simple-minded, and precisely because of this they enable the pop star to bring the suffering of Afghan women back to prime time without dramaturgical pressure.
Zervakis and Opdenhövel put pop and politics in the right mix: the political clown Kubicki is fobbed off with two and a half minutes;
the pop singer Sayeed receives ten times the airtime for the cause of the Afghan women.
The important thing: The German party clamor and the war abroad are not mixed into a single infotainment broth.
Brexit teasing in front of the Oktoberfest backdrop
Even if the new moderation duo presents itself casually to carelessly on its first evening, it usually gets the curve to the correct tone of voice.
Sometimes Zervakis and Opdenhövel are very drunk with themselves and exaggeratedly proud of their stunt-like change from ARD's black bread television to ProSieben's everything-is-possible program.
But they always manage to take themselves back when things get serious.
In the second half of their magazine they sniff and tease their way through a beer tasting with the idiot bard James Blunt.
Blunt had already shown in other ProSieben programs that he is almost as funny as his ballads oily.
There were then a few nice Brexit teasing in the Oktoberfest backdrop.
Then there was another appropriate change of tone when the story of a small family from the Ahr Valley's struggle against the consequences of the flood is told.
The flood victims received almost 45 minutes;
As with the Afghanistan complex before, a topic is brought back to the fore that, strangely, has moved more and more into the background in the many TV election programs of the last few days.
The fact that Zervakis and Opdenhövel then promise the little daughter of the family a surprise, only to turn open eyes to the commercial break immediately afterwards, is a cunning act.
After the break, Blunt hugs his new power ballad, and Zervakis and Opdenhövel lead the flood victims' parents to a pink children's room with a princess castle for the daughter who stayed at home.
Without these excursions into the »stern-TV« smear, »Zervakis and Opdenhövel. Live «can be really good.
