An outrageous notion: the crazies in our world could be in the majority by now, the kind who always lament personal injustices and carry a long list of culprits, who peer over their neighbor's fence in anticipation of great evil, who immediately spot suspicious changes detects when her son has been injected with a deadly virus, or agitates an angry mob in her own frustration.
The very ones who spend most of their time in a shadowy world of alternative beliefs.
Elena Witzeck
Editor in the Feuilleton.
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And now imagine that there were so many that you suddenly had to question yourself.
Where do you belong, still among the observers - or already in the cabinet of curiosities of this new normality?
Didn't you yourself only recently accuse the boss, the girlfriend, the man at the Citizens' Registration Office of hostile intentions?
Is the distrust already irretrievably deep?
A healing remedy
In the mini-series "Normaloland" everyone is invariably crazy, and as the name suggests, this is sold as normal.
For the sake of simplicity, the plot focuses on the fictional town of Neustadt, in which people live who are endowed with different, equally sympathetic dialects.
Neustadt has a vet who goes from house to house with an old compressor and promises to use shaking therapy to rid people of a chip implanted in their brains during the Covid vaccination.
In Neustadt there is an Apache tribe in the forest, a civil rights movement that is inciting residents of the Neustadt district against the old town, a supposed art patron who has become rich from arms exports and a self-proclaimed therapist.
In 15-minute episodes, the plot can be built up to a certain extent, but nobody expects that either.
The best point of each episode is the starting position itself, the doggedness with which the protagonists of the respective short story tackle the feeling of unfair treatment and pursue their goals provides entertainment that sometimes makes you smile crookedly.
Ulrike Arnold, as a drained therapist, does everything to get rid of her practice and patient base to a real doctor when she realizes that her alternative healing methods are having no effect at all.
The district activist, embodied in an incredibly credible manner by rapper Fatoni, is looking for enemies whom he can fight with his citizens' brigade in order to prevent further splinter groups in his own initiative.
"He gets on my nerves so much"
Fortunately, one can sympathize with the lost.
In their weak-headedness, they have something very human about them – and thus potential for identification.
"He's getting on my nerves," the therapist bursts out when one of her patients, stretched out on the sofa, talks about his lot for the thousandth time.
The protagonists also or mainly suffer from their fellow human beings, just as it should be for their self-image.
“I just can't stand injustice,” exclaims Fatoni, the raging activist, and who wouldn't claim the same for himself?
From episode three at the latest, the plot structure from the presentation of the initial situation to the showdown is very familiar.
Director Matthias Thönnissen imitates the course of reality TV shows with their resistance and fateful decisions that reliably overtake the heroes.
Adversaries, confidants or the protagonists themselves comment and look thoughtfully into the camera.
In "Normaloland" there are hardly ten actors, and the roles are redistributed from episode to episode.
Unfortunately, the stories often end with no surprises.
The moral fervor with which sentences such as "People have an answer for everything - they can't be saved" or "We Neustadters are second-class citizens" are recited with them, creates an irritating thoughtfulness despite all reference to the power of satire.
Is this quoted from the textbook of lost fellow citizens?
But it is precisely this realization that is ultimately comforting.
You shouldn't be completely crazy yet.
Normaloland runs on Monday at midnight on ZDF and is available in the media library.