Review of Der König von St. Pauli

"Der König von St. Pauli " is a German mini-series from 1998, so this one is already 20 years old by now. The title means basically translated The King of St. Pauli and the latter is the name of a district from the city of Hamburg, one of Germany's biggest cities, and this district is not only known for its football team, but also because it is basically the capital of Germany when it comes to prostitution, maybe the capital of Europe even you could say. And with that, all kinds of other crimes and sleaziness follow up right there. I find it a bit surprising that there are really not too many films about St. Pauli here in Germany as the location offers a great place for memorable stories, but yeah it can be heavy material and it is in here for sure. With the recent accusations against Wedel here in public in terms of how he treated his female cast members and women in general, one can take a whole new perspective on his mini-series here. It consists of 6 episodes all in all taking place in chronological order and frequently endiing on cliffhangers. In my opinion, episodes 2 and 3, probably episode 6 also, are superior to 1, 4 and 5. But it's minimal differences most of the time. There is not one episode that is really bad and also not one that is outstandingly good. Each episode has full feature length which means that the entire thing is around 600 minutes long and it would be a huge challenge to watch it in one sitting, probably too much, maybe even for two sittings really too much. 3 sounds accurate or just go the simple route with 6. There is no mario Adorf in here like in many other Wedel productions, but you will still find many known names, people that you will recognize as a German film buff at least. Sadly many actors here did not have the luckiest of fates. Hasenfratz, who you could certainly call one of the male leads died an untimely death from cancer. Maranow died at a relatively young age as well. Other cast members are not alive anymore either, but reached a good age like Thate, who I always like and without him it would certainly have been a weaker watch. Hoenig is the one who stole the awards attention and I can see why. His character is really baity and he is also doing a fine job with it. The focus on one female character mostly as the trademark singer from the Blue Banana was not the best choice and they could have included others too I think, of course without including too many characters that are eventually elaborated on poorly. Perhaps the biggest weaknesses this mini-series has is that it just does not feel realistic while it really wants to. This is shown through the almost comolete lack of comedic moments in here. There may be ciolence and crime at St. Pauli, but the way it looked here it felt as if it was some civil war going on really and honestly if it had been anywhere like this in Germany here, then police would have intervened and restored order qucikly. But the ways in which people are killed here or severely injured or at least threatened has in this quantity not much to with authenticity. A bit of a shame as this is really a deal-breaking criticism that stays worse in the mind than some of the good aspects and performances. The consequence is that this can really only be seen as an over-the-top guilty pleasure and I am sure most people actually from hamburg or St. Pauli feel no connection with how their city is displayed here. And honestly, for a guilty pleasure it is just too long, even if some of the more colorful characters make up for it. And it's kinda ironic that the most memorable component here is the theme song by Bonnie Tyler and her voice fits perfect I must say and this means this one peaked during each episode already during the intro. It's ough for me to speak out a positive or negative recommendation here, so maybe I give a positive one for episodes 1 and 2, maybe 3 also, but if at that point you are not sucked in by the story, and most people won't be, then do not keep watching as it is not getting any better in the second half. That's all, as for Wedel's work and he made many mini-series I think it is also somewhere in the middle, just like my rating, not among his worst or best. That's all folks.