Until two years ago they were just there, supermarkets. Ugly tiles in the neon light, loveless stacks of potting soil in front of the sliding door, goods packed on shelves that blatantly lie in our faces with their cow pastures and wooden spoons. As if this pale world still had something to do with a weekly market. Not to forget the employees who have been fobbed off with a minimum wage and who take revenge for this at minimum speed when dialing in. Still better than artificially stupid robot registers: “Unknown item on the packaging shelf.” Nevertheless, we were there all the time, at the zero point of consumption, only - psychology of habituation - didn't even notice it.
Then came the lockdown, and the walk to the supermarket became the only bright spot.
What a longing for potting soil.
Battles over toilet paper.
The employees, who were often only protected from the virus by abstruse Plexiglas muck, and continued to be fobbed off with minimum wages, were now heroes, front-line fighters in total sitting out the pandemic.
For the first time we started to see her.
The fact that the old law, which the cashier Flora (Nura Habib Omer) quotes in “Die Discounter”: “They hate us, we hate them”, is still in force, does not change the fact that we have grown to love supermarkets .
And promptly these defiant paradises are now also threatened.
A “Pearl Harbor Moment” for the grocery trade
A few days ago the insatiable group Amazon announced that it would roll up the European supermarket landscape; there was martial talk of a “Pearl Harbor moment” for the grocery trade. The new premises equipped with countless cameras and sensors, successfully tested in the United States, register everything that customers fish off the shelves. When you leave the store, the purchase is automatically billed. In terms of lying in the face of the packaging technology, it seems only logical that while Amazon is doing away with the supermarket employees (only a few clearers are still needed; other chains are already following), a series is hoisting into the program that includes the same celebrates all their weird, analogue heroism once again as if there were no tomorrow.
The medium-sized, not too scruffy discounter market with the funny, failed franchise name "Feinkost Kolinski" - typical brick look with a tin roof, own parking lot - actually grows much faster under the exaggerated, helpless branch manager Thorsten (Marc Hosemann, a stunner) Heart than any shop around the corner. And that's no wonder, because behind the detail-loving punchline, copied from reality to the next mockumentary in short episodes, which dispenses with a larger narrative whole, there is Christian Ulmen, a mastermind of incredibly authentic comedy. Just think of “Jerks”.
Unfortunately, Ulmen does not even play in “Die Discounter”, but instead acts as a producer alongside Carsten Kelber.
That's a shame, because his insidious poker face naivety and his acting depth are missing.
Nevertheless, the young adult production practices a little in real terms.
The other jerk, Fahri Yardim, has a guest appearance in the first episode, where he is persistently and funny mistaken for Elyas M'Barek by the uptight security employee Jonas (Merlin Sandmeyer).
The fact that he secretly rearranges organic eggs into the barn packaging goes too far for Jonas.
Cash register small talk and pasted best-before dates
In terms of genre, it is a team building series that tells about how very different individuals become friends. Emil Belton, Oskar Belton and Bruno Alexander wrote and directed. The latter also plays “the newcomer” at the cash register. The other roles are also made up: the James Dean rebel who doesn't stick to any rule (Ludger Bökelmann), the lazy handsome boy (David Ali Rashed), the slutty duckling and mastermind (Klara Lange). With perfect timing and a keen sense for casually served gags, this lovable emergency workforce bungles themselves very well through the apparently boring everyday life between cashier small talk, boss whistles, pasted best-before dates and ride-on scrubber driers, an actually limitless ennui, which, however, according to the motto "Fick." the supermarket,wherever you can “is constantly broken by disasters, skirmishes, thefts and lusts.
Many narrative threads revolve around love affairs, whereby it speaks for brilliant actors, even a dull idea like the fact that Schönling Samy teaches the almost fifty-year-old branch manager how to tinder a few funny moments. In other respects, too, many of the jokes are to be expected, and this is by no means the first supermarket series. The NBC production “Superstore” took a humorous, warm-hearted look at this very special sociotope in a cheap, budget-friendly look six years ago. Ulmen's series, directly copied from the Dutch format “Vakkenfullers”, on the other hand, appears more spontaneous, more garishly told and more comedy-like in the figure drawing. Apparently it wasn't supposed to be as wildly over-the-top as the Dutch massacre, and real Pearl Harbor moments were also shied away from. So it remains a harmless onelaconic smiley narrative that you might actually have to give a discount as a post-lockdown homage to the veterans of the avocado front. Heroes' applause as a series, so to speak. And above it hovers the final announcement from the very top: "Cash desk is closing, please don't queue anymore."
All episodes of Die Discounter from today on Amazon Prime Video