München Beats turns Munich techno history into a soap

The ZDF series München Beats, about the origins of Munich’s techno culture and the Kunstpark Ost party district, focuses more on fictional family drama than on the scene itself, BR says in a review.

Set in the 1990s, the series follows Linda, played by Jule Herrmann, as she leaves her parents’ potato farm in the countryside and enters Munich’s rave scene. She soon finds work in a club, buys her first records and gets a mixing desk.

At the same time, her parents’ farm is fighting for survival. Pfanni, the large Munich dumpling company supplied by the farm, is facing closure. The storyline is based on a real development: Pfanni abandoned its factory grounds near Munich’s Ostbahnhof in 1996. The site later became Kunstpark Ost, described in the article as Europe’s largest culture and party district.

The best-known club there was Ultraschall, which moved into a former potato-washing facility. München Beats draws on these historical events, but the techno scene largely serves as a stylish backdrop for two intertwined family stories.

The series centres on the fictional romance between Marius, the son of the Pfanni family, played by Klaus Steinbacher, and Linda, an aspiring musician. Business, money and love receive more attention than raves and nightlife.

BR describes the result as closer to a daytime soap than a serious portrait of a milieu. Techno figures such as Jeff Mills and Carl Craig, who once played at Ultraschall, do not appear. Apart from Linda and her gay brother Andi, the techno community remains largely invisible.

The series could have explored subculture, queerness, diversity, musical rebellion and the decline of clubs. Instead, it concentrates on Pfanni’s documented corporate history, the transformation of its factory grounds into a party district and the invented misfortunes of the two families. München Beats is available on the ARD Mediathek.