KRANK Berlin (Berlin ER) is by far the German TV series that is most critical of our social, political and also economic conditions in Germany. It's a complete contrast to feel-good soaps like Unter uns and whatever they're all called, where everything is ironed flat and you're fed a perfect world, a make-believe world – while this one depicts the brutal everyday reality of a Berlin hospital: overload, the psychological strain on the staff, and also, at times, humanity breaking through.
We need to analyse this more closely. We'll do more research and pull together what's already out there online about this work. I saw that on IMDb (Internet Movie Database) the series is rated 7.3, I think. That's a very high score. Very few films and series reach a score of 7, and for a German series it's very rare too. KRANK Berlin moved me deeply, and I'll share more thoughts on it.
The series shows where it leads when a system like the health system – which is actually supposed to serve as an essential public service and precisely not work to capitalist, profit-driven targets – when that is systematically cut back over decades and the principles of public provision are systematically gutted. Then it leads to exactly this state, where it's slowly already collapsing.
That means the system is no longer able to cope with the many cases – above all the emergencies – and is only kept going because the people who work in it – the nurses, the doctors – regularly sacrifice themselves beyond their limits. That means they personally carry something that society should actually be carrying. And that's why the doctors are already all past the limit, or many of them are at the limit, have burnout, can't cope with a lot of things.
⚠️ Spoiler alert: the next section reveals a key twist of season 1.
What moved me most was Ben, who treats people who have no health insurance, who are being exploited here – it's about two young men, from Moldova I think, who aren't part of the EU and therefore have no insurance cover, aren't really registered in the system at all and are exploited as slave labour, like under feudalism. And Ben, as a doctor, risks his job by helping these people illegally on the roof of the run-down, dilapidated hospital, by treating them there makeshift, but treating them professionally, as a doctor. So he has the mandate: as a doctor he has to help people, regardless of the outside circumstances. But the system doesn't allow it.
And he's the one who risks his life there. And the scene I found worst was with Viktoria – the drug-dependent homeless woman who lives illegally down on the grounds and has a festering leg – that he treats her and shows her humanity. And then, as he's dressing her terribly festering wound, she dies on him.
And now he has a huge problem, because Viktoria is now lying dead in the hospital and of course he now has to bring her back to her spot, where she normally vegetated. And he does that quickly, too: he drags her down, wheels her down on a trolley. And I find it so macabre and so awful that he then has to undo the wound dressing he's just done as a doctor, so that nobody notices he treated her! So the fact that he fulfilled his mandate as a human being and as a doctor – namely to save people and to treat them and to help – gets punished in this brutal system. So these people get punished for fulfilling their mandate as doctors.
And that shows very clearly where we now stand socially and politically. And when I then look at books like Im Grunde gut (Humankind) by this Dutchman – what's his name, Ruben – then I have to say: Dear Ruben, or whatever your name is, you may be a great person, a great journalist or whatever – you're a great scholar, but switch on reality for once! Are we humans, as a society, really “basically good”? Sadly I can't see it that way or confirm it, when I also watch a series like KRANK Berlin, because it's very close to reality, I think. And I think the comments and the reviews reflect that too.
What do you take away from this thought?
Thank you. Every answer fits – take it with you into your day. Would you like to share something yourself?
