User Reviews

"Die Piefke-Saga" is a German/Austrian mini-series from 1990 by Dotzel, Masten and Mitterer. The first 3 parts are actually from 1990, while number 4 is from 1993 the year Dotzel sadly died already and Masten took over as director, which means it is next year 25 years old looking only at the last episode and the earlier parts are heading straight towards the 30th anniversary. The entire thing runs for almost 6.5 hours and the two episodes from the second half are slightly longer (10 minutes or so) than the first two. Non-German and non-Austrian viewers and readers should know that Piefke is the Austrian slightly derogatory term for Germans, so from that you already know that a great deal of the film is about the relationship between Germans and Austrians, a bit of a culture clash film, even if Austrians are more in the center of it and also clashing with themselves. The ones who call Germans Piefke, the ones who are offended, the ones who are angry because Germans stop coming as tourists to Austria and the negative economic impact resulting from that. And that is just the first episode The focus here is basically from start to finish on the Sattmanns and Mittelbergers, two families and their struggles. This one has the typical Austrian approach to comedy when it is subtly funny, but I was surprised how rarely it actually goes for comedy. It really is more about the drama overall, sometimes even pretty tragic. Here and there you will see a familiar face in here like Weinzierl from the older generation or Bloéb and Moretti of course from the (then) younger generation. Sadly I must say that this mini-series never really made an impact on me. The characters are not too interesting, also too many despite the runtime and frequently not properly elaborated on. You will need a great deal of patience if you actually plan on seeing this one in one sitting, my suggestion is make it two, maybe 4 sittings if you don't lose interest early on. I cannot say it gets much better afterward and feels fairly one-dimensional most of the time. And not below the surface much. Best episode? Maybe episode 2. But the rating there is too high too as all episodes are basically equally mediocre. Looks quite overrated here on IMDb. It's a thumbs-down for me as a whole. Don't watch.