How ‘The Flaws’, An Absurdist Comedy Series In Which Barely Anyone Speaks, Beat The Competition At Seriencamp: “We Thought Dialogue Was The Hardest Part, So Let’s Leave Out The Dialogue”
When Bastien Reiber and his Das Manko Collective started planning a TV show, they decided they would do away with the difficult part. The resulting ZDF series, The Flaws, is incredibly light on dialogue but heavy on slapstick, poignant humor and heart. Inspired by the likes of Ch…
When Bastien Reiber and his Das Manko Collective started planning a TV show, they decided they would do away with the difficult part.
The resulting ZDF series, The Flaws, is incredibly light on dialogue but heavy on slapstick, poignant humor and heart. Inspired by the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Peter Sellers and iconic German comedian Loriot, the show just won at competition in Seriencamp against bigger budget offerings like dystopian sci-fi All Heroes Are Bastards and Helena Zengel-starrer Westend Girl.
“We had done some similar plays where there were hardly any words,” Reiber, one member of the 11-strong theater troupe, told Deadline in the days leading up to Seriencamp. “At the time we weren’t writers and we thought dialogue was the hardest part, so let’s leave out the dialogue.”
“It wasn’t much easier,” he added, jokily.
The Flaws (Das Manko), which premieres in Cologne tomorrow night, follows the typical employees of a German government office – quiet, obedient and spectacularly bad at their jobs. Protected by a compassionate boss, they face dismissal when consultants audit the department, until a lucky mix-up reroutes them to an advanced training program.
Seriencamp said of The Flaws: “It truly leaves you speechless – often simply because it uses the almost pantomimic techniques of circus clowning to reduce the madness of the modern workplace in general, and German bureaucracy in particular, to absurdity. This works so well because the collective of writers behind it also acts in front of the camera.”
The idea came out of hours and hours of Zoom meetings during the pandemic as Reiber and his collective shaped a show that would allow them to do what they like doing best. They made a 10-minute short film about an office away day with no speaking and ZDF was eventually sold, along with Stromberg director Arne Feldhusen, who came on board to helm the troupe.
With scenes including one where the employees are stuck in a tiny smoking room, half of them squished against a pane of glass, the show may appear improvized but is in fact “very very precise,” explained Reiber.
“We first had to convince people to give us some money for this and then had to write it down but realized you cannot write, ‘And then he comes in and falls on his nose’,” he explained. “So we had to find a way of making this funny on paper.”
Only one cast member has what could be constituted anything close to a normal speaking part. This character, played by Amelie Willberg, is the goody two-shoes and speaks at a thousand miles a minute. Reiber said her performance is a “miracle.” “She’s from another planet,” he added.
The writing clearly worked as ZDF commissioning editor Jakob Zimmerman told us “it was really punchy, really well written and really clear how the scenes would play out.”
The Flaws has a touch of Severance with its bland office setting and humor overlayed with symbolism but Reiber preferred to cite older influences.
“I’m a big fan of Charlie Chaplin, Peter Sellers, Buster Keaton,” he added. “This is where it came from.”
These may be the crème de la crème of comedy influences but Reiber said The Flaws was such a challenge to put together as “there was nothing in German television to refer to.” “We had to discover during the process whether it was funny, or too ridiculous, or not ridiculous enough,” he added. “This was the challenge but I liked it very much.”
“Being a collective in a very democratic way”
He hailed Feldhusen for “letting us do what we did, not trying to invent it.”
Feldhusen didn’t skip a beat before telling Deadline the democratic nature of the show made it his favorite to direct.
“It was paradise,” he added. “I was a bit afraid of 11 actors coming together and being a collective in a very democratic way. If they had a problem they tried and solved it with 11 people and if you had a better idea then everyone accepted it and moved on. They wanted to do something with their friends and have the same humor, and this worked out pretty good.”
When ZDF’s Zimmerman gave Schreiber notes, Zimmerman said he would “politely nod, say he would get back to the collective and come back with better ideas.” “A couple of weeks later I would get something wildly different, but really cool.”
Schreiber in turn paid tribute to ZDF’s Zimmerman for “shaping it more to get to the core.”
Zimmerman runs a ZDF department that mostly makes first time feature films along with heading the Quantum label commissioning lower budget comedies and shorts.
Along with The Flaws, his team also took home a Seriencamp prize in short form for Sheep. The show about sheep mistakenly believing they have domesticated humans features real animals whose mouth movements were subsequently animated.
Zimmerman said his department is proof that German TV is willing to be risky. “We are allowed to take risks because we don’t have the pressure of the shows always having to be a success,” he added. “If they’re not then we learn something. We say, ‘Let’s do this and it’s wonderful if it’s so radical’.”
