What would film and television be without vampires? Definitely lacking in some bloody love stories with bite. The myth is alive, and as proof of this, the eight-part German series “Love Sucks” is now starting (from October 11th in the ZDF media library, from October 31st on ZDFneo), in which a sensitive bloodsucker falls in love with a beautiful young mortal – Greetings from the love story of Bella and Edward from the famous “Twilight” films.
The hero of “Love Sucks” is Ben von Greifenstein (Damian Hardung), a gentle vampire who is 287 years old and who has already fallen in love with a mortal once. She’s old now, close to dying, and Ben is broken. During a visit to a fairground in Frankfurt am Main, he meets and falls in love with the pretty fairground boxer Zelda (Havana Joy). What neither of them knows yet: Zelda comes from a family of vampire hunters – like Shakespeare’s tragic lovers Romeo and Juliet, the two come from two clans that are enemies to the core.
Doom approaches in the form of Ben’s brother Theo (“Tatort” star Rick Okon), an elegant, cruel bloodsucker with no scruples. In the magnificent old Greifenstein villa, Theo hosts a nightly dance party, which soon turns into a bloodbath: the vampires among the ravers attack their unsuspecting human party guests with distorted faces and sharp teeth. The fit Zelda manages to escape in dire need, but in the process she accidentally stakes Theo’s not entirely immortal lover Agata (Dana Herfurth). The vampire, of course, swears revenge for the painful loss – for eight episodes the two clans strive for life, while Ben and Zelda fear for their love.
“Love Sucks” is the third German vampire series this year. The mystery thriller “Oderbruch” started on the first, and “Der Upir” with Fahri Yardim, a comedy series that gleefully pokes fun at the myth, recently started on the Joyn streaming service. The saga about Ben and Zelda is completely different: The eight-part series does not break the romantic narrative tradition, but adopts it – with the directing duo Andreas Prochaska and Lea Becker, Dracula’s heirs can still be elegant and sexy. Action and great emotions, vampire hunters with sharp wooden stakes and bloodsuckers who store blood instead of canned peas in their storage cellar: very few elements of “Love Sucks” are new. However, the setting provides a modern twist – the main locations are a neon-lit fairground in Frankfurt am Main and the fair boxing ring, where Zelda beats up her Ben in the first episode: both of which are not exactly classic locations for vampire material.
Series creator Marc O. Seng wants the eight-part series to be understood not just as a romantic mystery series about young adults, but as a reflection of capitalist society: “An elite, wealthy upper class ruthlessly uses the most valuable capital of a precarious, powerless majority: their blood.” says the TV writer, who also wrote the scripts for the Netflix saga “Dark”. But perhaps you don’t have to go that far to enjoy the series, which tells its horror story in a glossy manner and has its weaknesses, especially when it wants to be funny: the appearances of Anne Ratte-Polle as Mother Greifenstein , who reprimand their boys with rude sentences like “I’ve been busting my ass for you for 300 years,” are a bit strangely out of line.
Lead actor Damian Hardung had his breakthrough in 2015 with the hospital series “Club of the Red Ribbons” and most recently caused a stir with the internationally successful German streaming saga “Maxton Hall” on Prime Video as a cute student at an elite boarding school. For Zelda actress Havana Joy it is the first leading role in a major production. (ski)
“Love Sucks” (from Friday, October 11th, ZDF media library)
