In 'Miss Merkel,' Germany's former chancellor is a crime-solving amateur detective
In 'Miss Merkel,' Germany's former chancellor is a crime-solving amateur detective
AUGUST 31, 2024 5:01 AM ET
By Esme Nicholson
In a scene from the German TV series Miss Merkel, actress Katharina Thalbach, playing the amateur detective based on the former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, takes a closer look at her pug Helmut.
RTL/Maor Waisburd
BERLIN Little is known about how Germanys former Chancellor Angela Merkel is spending her retirement, and that seems to be the way she likes it. Thanks to a German crime fiction series adapted for television and now proving a hit in Italy, she is back in the headlines this time as a fictional small-town amateur sleuth.
As the title suggests, Miss Merkel is a whodunnit that imagines the former chancellor as an Agatha Christie-style detective who starts solving crimes out of sheer boredom. For want of a G7 or European Union summit, Merkel is desperate to put down the garden shears and get back to solving something, anything! This time, its a village murder. Move over, Miss Marple!
The TV adaptation stars German theater doyenne Katharina Thalbach as Merkel. Like Merkel, Thalbach is 70 and from former East Germany. She says it wasnt too hard to prepare for the role.
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