Funeral for a Dog

This 8-part German drama showed on up Sky recently and, looking for something new to start, we gave it a try. Whilst it has its moments, particularly in the first couple of episodes - the longer it ran the more I felt that the story was being padded out and it needed to get back to the crux of its mystery.

Daniel Mandelkern (Albrecht Schuch) flies to Italy to try and interview the author of his favourite book "Astroland" Mark Svensson (Freidrich Mucke). The book dramatizes aspects of Svennsons real life, where he and his friend Felix (Daniel Strasser) met Tuuli Kovero (Alina Tomnikov) and the three had a tempestuous love affair that spanned a decade and several countries. Fortunately for Daniel, he arrives at the same time as Tuuli, who encourages him to join her the rest of the way. Svensson has become increasingly reclusive, since the death of Felix in an apparent drowning two years earlier.

I wonder, looking back, whether I'd have been quite as tolerant of this series had it been made in the UK or whether the international flavour of it made me more forgiving. We come to see the history of the central throuple in flashback as they work for the peace corp in Colombia, arrive in Finland just in time for Tuuli's mother to die and are in New York on September the 11th 2001. In fact, I think the volume of time we spend in the past of the three characters is largely to the detriment of the show. The first couple of episodes give us all the context that we need for the present-day story, perhaps with the exception of the knowledge that they have a child together a little later on. The hook that kept me watching, even though the lengthy New York section was the idea of finding out what happened to Felix. I'm all for a slow build to a drama, particularly a character based one, but I do look back now and wonder whether we needed all of the side stories and diversions that this takes.

The performances are good, all the technical work is too, song choices, beautiful camera work of the Italian lakes where the bulk of the present day story takes place - but once the conclusion was reached, my overwhelming thought was that at half the length it would have been twice the show.