The lottery is one of those areas in Germany in which the analogue and the digital do not always meet in the current state of the art.

Most people prefer a form that they fill out by hand, which they want to compare with their own eyes once it has been "read" into the system in the responsible kiosk - sometimes this can also be done acoustically if you are sitting in an adjoining room and notice that someone is doing this own date of birth on TV.

Then sometimes a search begins.

Where is it now, the note?

In the comedy “Guglhupfgeschwader” by the German director Ed Herzog, there are already problems when reading.

The Lotto-Otto, who runs the lottery shop in the village where Franz Eberhofer is heading towards his service anniversary as a police officer (ten years, eight films), has his own place for the lottery tickets.

So he desperately needs to hope that nobody ever wins anything, because then his repurposing of the "idiot tax" (as lottery bets are sometimes called) would be noticed.

However, Otto has already ventured too far into certain areas of differently organized gambling to be able to catch up with the money from the kiosk.

He's even missing half a finger, a sure sign that he's involved in lending business that Schufa doesn't want to know about.

One of the certainties of the Eberhofer films and the Rita Falk novels on which they are based is that basically everyone is fine in the village.

That's why Lotto-Otto isn't a damnable figure in "Guglhupfgeschwader".

On the contrary, he is also treated more like a case for therapy by the police.

The therapy consists first of all in a trip to the neighboring Czech Republic, where there are various opportunities for spending excess wealth - or, put more simply, where one can ruin oneself faster than in solid Bavaria.

As a character, Franz Eberhofer is designed to balance out even the wildest swings in the imagination with a look for which the word skepticism, despite its ancient Greek origins, is far too modern.

Like its predecessors, "Guglhupfgeschwader" is a big grounding company, even Mexican standoffs (in other words: Tarantino constellations) or rough Mafia banging always get beer table level as if by themselves.

And after winning the lottery, you can still buy a flashy Lamborghini, but in the end you'll walk to the soup, which everyone eats together at a table, like the masters and servants once did together.

In the Eberhofer films, pop culture (in "Guglhupfgeschwader" in particular rap) serves as a fever curve that shows normality, which of course is itself a remix to the highest degree.

But doesn't that also apply to the dough that grandma uses to make Guglhupf?

Even.

The culture never stops, sometimes it drags, in "Guglhupfgeschwader" it drags well.