It's also, almost in passing, an LGBT drama - which is how I found my way to it - because I am a sucker for gay romances, and because I wanted to see how modern-day Switzerland would deal with the topic of gay people in a rural setting.
It has the usual flaws of TV serials; it is too drawn out in places and you have perhaps too many subplots you have to keep track of. But all in all, I found it a cut above most soap opera/telenovela Netflix/Amazon Prime TV drama standards, for the writing, the acting, the dramatic turns of plot and the settings. It moves between a high powered downtown Zurich consulting firm and a dairy farm in Neumatt, an actual place a half hour north of Bern and an hour west of Zurich. It's a highly professional production, with actors who have some serious acting chops. And a great story of a family with skeletons in the closet and an inclination to rush to each other's aid one minute and throw each other under the bus, the next. It's great soap-opera material, in other words.
Before he takes his own life, the father writes a letter to the golden boy of the family, Michi, asking him to keep the farm going and look after his younger brother, Lolo (Lorenz). Lorenz combines a love of animals and the virtues of a hard-working farmer with near saintliness of character. He knows what's right, sees and calls out the evil all around him, and serves as the conscience of and motivator for his mother and his siblings. Michi never saw eye-to-eye with his father and left a long time ago to go off to the city to make his fortune. His mother and siblings are both proud of his talents and accomplishments but also find him hard to relate to, so thoroughly has Michi turned his back on them all. At one point, as a relationship is developing with his colleague and soon-to-be lover, Joel, Michi lies to him about his background as a farm boy.
What makes this a slice above soap opera quality story-telling is the skillful way the contrasts are worked in between rural and urban consciousness, between "the bright kid" and "the slow kid" members of the family, the way Michi is torn between the farmers of the world he grew up in and the opportunity to excel at what he can do as a consultant for the money-grubbing dairy farmer technocrats who pay him such a good salary. His father wants him to come help fix the roof. "Don't you know I can pay five workers to do that in the same amount of time it would take me to do it myself?" he responds. Other moments lift it, as well. When younger brother Lolo catches Michi in flagrante with his gay lover Joel, Michi is humiliated at being outed this way. "I know you're gay," Lorenz responds. "I was just wondering if this is a serious relationship." The low IQ son with the big heart, it turns out, has a really big heart - and is not so dumb, after all.
One of the reasons I watch so many LGBT dramas is I'm dealing with a lifelong need to find evidence that things have gotten better. I don't know whether this story is indicative of Swiss attitudes in general, or of just a segment of the Swiss population, or whether this is a form of socialist realism, but the treatment of Michi's homosexuality and the couple's relationship is refreshing. The local veterinarian, Döme, who complicates the story when a childhood fling is momentarily rekindled. Döme is now happily married and has no doubt his wife a child come first, but the fling serves to remind Michi of years gone by when he was caught by his father with Döme, also in flagrante (can't people do the jolly behind locked doors?). And this puts some meat on the bones of his need to run to the city and leave farm and family behind. The pre-gay-lib and post-gay-lib contrast is striking.
Another progressive element to the story is the fact that Michi's lover, Joel, has dark skin. Joel is played by the established German actor, Benito Bause, whose father is German/Italian and whose mother is Tanzanian. He is never identified as "the black guy" but only as "the guy from Hamburg." Progress worth noting.
Or is it? That's the trouble with social progressive elements in film or in literature; you never know whether they reflect attitudes in the larger society or simply the views of the filmmaker.
I can't predict how others will find this photoplay, let's call it. Those who want characters they can relate to may have a hard time relating to these sometimes loathsome members of the Wyss family. I don't know if their redeeming features are sufficient to overcome the backstabbing. I won't comment on the ending except to say they've left open the possibility of coming up with another season.
I'll be first in line to watch it, if they do.
In Schwyzerdütsch, Swiss Standard German and German Standard German, with English subtitles; also available dubbed in English
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