What is an evening with Markus Lanz on ZDF when nobody wants to get really upset and everyone is somehow very personable? Right, a missed opportunity. The TV review.
There are evenings that are grateful for a TV critic. Groovy slogans are made, people get outraged, in the best of cases there is even a gain in knowledge here and there. Such evenings are grateful because the subsequent criticism almost writes itself. And then there are evenings like this one with Markus Lanz and his guests on ZDF. Because compared to the grateful evenings, this group of Jürgen Trittin, Kai Wegner, Elke Heidenreich and Florian Klenk is like a piece of wet soap.
Because no matter how hard you try, this Markus Lanz edition simply cannot be grasped and, figuratively speaking, slips cheerfully through your hands. That does not mean that the cheerful group around the Elder Statetesman of the left-wing Greens, the head of the Berlin CDU, the Else Stratmann actress and the charming investigative journalists are boring or unsightly. Rather, there are simply no corners and edges. All four guests are personable in their own way. The only problem (from the point of view of the critic) is that they are obviously sympathetic to each other and therefore do not want to create any friction. This could also be the reason why the very interesting topics remain vague. Where there is no argument, where there is no argument, it can be cozy and random.
Markus Lanz (ZDF): In Austria, the press sells its integrity – for example to Sebastian Kurz
The best example: Austria. Ex-Chancellor Sebastian Kurz is tearing the rest of the credibility of his party, the tabloid press and, above all, his own person from the pedestal, producing a veritable corruption affair and what happens at Markus Lanz? Florian Klenk explains the whole thing succinctly, but packs it with so much charm that the monstrously outrageous core of the matter between his lovable dialect and his show with the mouse-like explanations remains almost completely untouched.
We learn that in Austria it is basically not a thing when parties buy press organs with ridiculously high prices for insignificant advertisements (“buy Austrian meat, it is the best meat!”) From court reports. Klenk even says: “You can do it, that’s your thing.” The whole thing south of the Alps will probably only become a problem when the cute luxury advertisements are paid for with taxpayers’ money.
Moment: what? Why is this mafia-like circumstance simply accepted? Where is the follow-up that Markus Lanz (ZDF) is used to? Above all: How can it be that the whole complex is treated almost exclusively as a failure of the matted political caste and basically no pig seems to care that the (tabloid) press in Austria de facto has absolutely no residual journalistic integrity having?
Bought coverage with taxpayers’ money in Austria: No reason for excitement at Markus Lanz (ZDF)
And that, at least that’s how it comes across, is not only known to pretty much every person in Austria, but also doesn’t care? Where is the outcry, also and especially (after all, we are discussing that right now) on this evening at Markus Lanz’s, about the fact that an ex-Chancellor ordered court reports with taxpayers’ money and overthrew his own party leader? And then in surveys (pay attention to the meta level) can remain stable at over 35 percent even after the revelation?
Because that’s the way it is in Austria? Haha, operetta state (Heidenreich), that’s how they are, the Ösis? It suits sociable, but unimportant groups that no one – neither the once tough Markus Lanz nor his calm group – speaks to that. Phew There could have been more. Much more. So it remains with Klenk’s advice that it is customary in the Alpine country to “generate fake news, spread fake news and make the people pay for their own disinformation.”
| guest | job |
|---|---|
| Jürgen Trittin | Politicians (greens) |
| Kai Wegner | Politician (CDU) |
| Elke Heidenreich | Author |
| Florian Klenk | journalist |
No different from what Armin Laschet is about. Heidenreich makes it clear that the hapless CDU chairman is politically finished, a loser, basically a politically undead. Only: Nobody really wants to contradict her. Not even the completely tame, somehow super nice Berlin CDU boss Wegner. He doesn’t even wake up from his verbal vegetative state when Heidenreich calls Markus Söder a “nefarious person” who “acted so intriguingly”. How should the mood arise when the wonderfully weird writer shoots her arrows into a jelly?
ZDF broadcast Markus Lanz: Jürgen Trittin is the statesman
Jürgen Trittin just doesn’t want to deliver either. He, once decried as a left-left kneebiter, is now so statesmanlike and grounded that he just doesn’t want to get really upset. Not about the fact that his Greens are (quite rightly) certified that they are not a very diverse party (Lanz: “Annalena and Robert, German is not possible”). Not about the fact that Heidenreich simply does not want to see that, as a white old woman, she is not the right person to talk to when it comes to classifying the everyday injuries of People of Color (of which, of course, no one was there).
And babble about taxi drivers from Morocco and “radio devices” chatting in Cologne. Incidentally, not even when Heidenreich (who incidentally puts an extremely unpleasant firework of stereotypes on the floor at the end) actually corrects the frighteningly uncontested caricature of a “one-legged Chinese deaf-mute”.
Markus Lanz (ZDF) with Trittin, Wegner, Heidenreich and Klenk: An evening of missed opportunities
This leaves a bland impression. So many exciting approaches, they all stay where they are, dilute, fade in shallow blah and transitional but not seamless hopping from topic complex to topic complex. In other words, they are talking about corruption. About a wounded CDU loser in the election. About a spokeswoman for the Green Youth who tweeted about an alleged “queen”. Here a highly respected author unpacks regulars’ table sayings about the “completely nonsensical” gender and minorities, which no CSU beer tent could have done better. Here the Greens are certified to be actually “the Whites”.
Markus Lanz on ZDF
“The Talk from October 13”, ZDF, from Thursday, October 13, 2021, from 10.45 p.m. On the net: ZDF media library.
And what happens? Nothing. A broadcast like a single shrug. Basically, in times of constant outrage, that’s not a bad thing at first. If you turn the medal, it’s almost beneficial that a few people here refuse to get really upset. But is that still Markus Lanz? For the critic, the bar of soap remains in hand. Slippery. Somehow unsatisfactory. But hey, your hands are clean. (Mirko Schmid)
