Many of my friends consider this a "cult series". Maybe I should have first watched when it was on TV in the mid-1980ies, and not now, thirty years later. Because now, I can only shake my wizened head and wonder at the minimalistic plot and sedated story development. In true hippie logic, nothing seems real. We are witnessing a bunch of young lads in rural Bavaria in supposedly 1968: a fat farmboy, the totally-out-of-his-league love interest, a high-school student, a car mechanic, a musician-cum-local-postie, complemented by a rich, old factory owner. Actually, the cast is mostly stellar, and most of them went on to great careers. But the plot is incredibly thin, and the development is consequently unbelievably slow to fill the 45 minutes of each episode. In the first episode, our hero wins a bull race by playing Sixties music to the bull and rubbing him down with, erm, rubbing alcohol. But his (the hero's, not the bull's) incompatible love interest (played by 1970ies softcore dreamboat Olivia Pascal) fails to show up, and his father decides to sell off the bull. So, in the next episode, boy farmer "Sir Quickly" climbs up a church tower and blasts the town with Beatles ballads, of all things, but in the end he is coaxed down with the unexpected help of the kindly factory owner Binser. Roll episode credits. And so forth. On to the next episode.
In a way this is very much a homage of the author and director Franz Xaver Bogner to his home county of Ebersberg. Fair enough, but I would have liked to see intriguing stories alongside eccentric characters. The 1960ies culture clash thing seems to be tagged on an never really works.
OK, the music by Hans-Jürgen Buchner (Haindling) is of course great. Great cast, great music, but that's it. And did I already mention the crappy scripts?
