After the German private broadcaster RTL achieved an unexpected success in 2023 with a first television film about "Miss Merkel", the former German Chancellor Angela Merkel in a fictional retirement in the Uckermark, a sparsely populated region in the northeast of Berlin not far from the Polish border the broadcaster now followed up with a second part. Once again the script was based on a novel by David Safier.
However, where the first film made do with lightness, looseness, humor and interesting backdrops (the plot was only secondary anyway), and played with the well-known characters as well as the fictional ones, the second part lacks all of that. This time more plot depth would have been necessary. But a clearly constructed plot is not enough to create suspense. Merkel's romantic feelings for Kurt "Aramis" Kunkel (Sven Martinek) are completely unbelievable, and the fantasy/dream sequences that show Kunkel as a musketeer are also unintentionally embarrassing.
While the first part aroused sympathy for the region's residents, the second part was only sad. Stereotypical characters (particularly bad: Inspector Hannemann, played by Sascha Nathan; Thalbach also overacted her Merkel, but Nathan turns a man who couldn't be that stupid because of his position into a complete fool). The fact that Merkel can act half-unrecognized, even though she is actually recognized by everyone, is absurd. The fact that there is also a well-frequented Satanist club in this very atheist region is really one thing over the top. What next? Aliens? By the way: the faint-hearted shouldn't look too closely at the autopsy, that was very graphic. At least Susanne Bredehöft gives her forensic doctor some personality - and humor!
The film always wins when it plays with allusions to real history, to politics, to Merkel's time as chancellor. Thalbach also has her best moments here, as she makes an effort to capture Merkel's peculiarities and nature, knowing full well that Merkel is unthinkable as a detective because this way of acting doesn't actually correspond to Merkel's nature. And even if the films, like the novels, derive their appeal from this, Thalbach's mixture of exuberant agility and half-stooped posture is unfortunately far from the real Merkel. Ironically, real emotions in this movie only come at the very end, during the credits, when Merkel's bodyguards and the young mother known from the first film let things get wild. I wish the entire film had been played with so much effort.
A pity. The idea itself is now lost. RTL will probably also give us the film adaptation of the third novel, but that doesn't really have to be the case. The film was neither sufficient as a crime thriller nor funny enough as a comedy.
