Yesterday evening, I chanced to tune into an episode of the popular and long-running German action TV show Alarm für Cobra 11 – Die Autobahnpolizei (Alarm for Cobra 11 – The Highway Police). The premise of the show is simple enough: Two highway cops – Turkish German cop Semir Gerkhan* and a succession of partners, the most recent of which is Ben Jäger – get embroiled in all sorts of cases, which inevitable lead to car chases, explosions and lots of car crashes. It’s like US shows used to be in the 1980s, lots of banter, car chases and explosions, only that the stunts are much better.
This particular episode – no idea if it was a new or an old one, though it starred the current cast – was a take on the US crime drama The Mentalist (which is not even broadcast on the same channel in Germany) and basically featured Ben and Semir versus the Mentalist or rather a very Mentalist like character, who not just was a former stage magician and hypnotist, but even wore the same type of three-piece suits as Simon Baker does on The Mentalist. And this fake Mentalist character was played by none other than Nikolaj Coster-Waldau a.k.a. Jaime Lannister from Game of Thrones. At any rate, I’m pretty sure it was him, since I missed the credits. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau has acted in German films long before Hollywood discovered him. Plus, the fake Mentalist character was Danish, just like Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, probably to account for a slight accent.
But it gets even better than that. For after the evil plot of evil has been thwarted by the combined efforts of Semir, Ben and the fake Mentalist, the fake Mentalist does the two police officers a favour (for getting him off a robbery charge) and performs some magic tricks at the pirate themed birthday party for Semir’s daughter. Of course, everybody is dressed as a pirate for the occasion with Ben giving a pretty good impression of Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow.
Yes, it’s pop culture overload.
*Erdogan Atalay who plays Semir was the first Turkish German actor to play a lead role in a TV show.
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