The journalist Daniel Mandelkern and his wife Elisabeth are tired of each other.

They are in their mid-thirties, depressed by middle-class life and looking for a way out of lethargy.

The fact that Elisabeth (Anne Ratte-Polle) is Daniel's boss doesn't make it any easier.

The two only challenge each other, which plunges the cerebral almond core (Albrecht Schuch) into a life crisis.

This is how the Sky series "Funeral for a Dog" begins.

New job brings a break

Kevin Hanschke

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A new job gives the couple some much-needed time off.

Elisabeth urges Daniel to track down the book author and bon vivant Mark Svensson (Friedrich Mücke).

Damaged, Mandelkern travels to Switzerland.

Once there, he is welcomed by the “somewhat different relationship constellation” of Mark, Tuuli (Alina Tomnikov) and Felix (Daniel Sträßer).

All three are also characters from Svensson's bestseller "Astroland".

He quickly realizes that he is not welcome on the writer's estate.

But Tuuli encourages him to stay.

He delves into Svensson's literary work.

In each episode, Mandelkern reads a new chapter.

A surreal frenzy ensues, in which the novel and reality merge.

The series is based on Thomas Pletzinger's 2008 debut novel Funeral of a Dog.

The book describes the love story of three people, which begins in 1998 while doing voluntary service in Colombia, continues through Brazil, the Arctic Circle to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York and ends in Italy.

There's a birth, lots of bare skin, and an intricate amour fou.

The book was celebrated at the time as a portrait of the pop generation.

The directors David Dietl and Barbara Albert and the screenwriters Hanno Hackfort, Bob Konrad and Thomas Pletzinger have developed a four-hundred-minute series from it.

Cameraman Frank Griebe, who also filmed “Winterleeper” and “Babylon Berlin”, takes care of beautiful pictures bathed in sepia.

The plot covers several time levels: the love triangle in the past, the journalist's former life and the present.

The flashbacks frame literary references to Max Frisch's "Montauk", F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" or Goethe's "Werther", which rarely seems poetic, but rather intentional.

The highlight of the series is a cockfight, to which Felix and Svensson compete.

Mandelkern is also asked to a duel by Svensson - to table tennis, but that is so aggressive that it is clear: This is about the struggle for Tuuli's love and nothing else.

Rivalry among men becomes the main theme of the series.

And so one wonders whether this is a commentary on new forms of relationships and the pop literature generation, a caricature of the literary scene (the title and the Swiss setting alone are reminiscent of Christian Kracht) or a relationship drama.

In the league of Truffaut's ménage-à-trois "Jules und Jim", "Casablanca", Woody Allen's "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" or Tom Tykwer's "Drei" the series does not climb up.

The love triangle and the plot seem constructed, the levels of action diverge.

In the end, at least the mystery of the eponymous, three-legged dog is resolved.

Not more.

Funeral for a Dog

, today at 8.15 p.m. on Sky Atlantic, on Sky Ticket and Sky Q.