This TV-production was a big prestige project for German station Sat1 at a time when the station was moving towards more ambitious and expensive TV-movies. While critics liked this movie a lot, it was a huge flop with the audience, probably in part due to its excessive length (both parts ran for more than three hours each including commercials). As a result of this, Sat 1 largely refrained from making more TV movies and now only produces about one event-movie per year.