'The Flaws' Beats Big Budgets at Seriencamp With No
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- 'The Flaws' (Das Manko), a ZDF absurdist comedy series that uses almost no dialogue, won at Seriencamp's competition against higher-budget offerings including dystopian sci-fi 'All Heroes Are Bastards' and Helena Zengel-starrer 'Westend Girl.'
- Bastien Reiber and the 11-member Das Manko Collective conceived the show during pandemic Zoom meetings, citing Charlie Chaplin, Peter Sellers, Buster Keaton, and German comedian Loriot as core influences.
- The series follows bland, obedient German government office employees facing dismissal from consultants, saved by a mix-up that reroutes them to an advanced training program, with slapstick and circus-clowning techniques doing the storytelling.
- Arne Feldhusen, director of Stromberg, came on board to helm the show and called directing the democratic 11-actor collective 'paradise,' crediting their ability to solve problems together without ego.
- Only Amelie Willberg has a near-normal speaking part, playing the goody-two-shoes who 'speaks at a thousand miles a minute' — Reiber called her performance 'a miracle' and 'from another planet.'
- ZDF commissioning editor Jakob Zimmerman runs a department built around lower-budget first-time features, shorts, and experimental comedies, and his team also won a Seriencamp short-form prize for 'Sheep,' a show using real sheep whose mouths were animated in post.
- Zimmerman said his department is 'allowed to take risks because we don't have the pressure of the shows always having to be a success,' adding that failures are framed as learning opportunities rather than commercial threats.
Why it matters: ZDF's Zimmerman explicitly tied the win to a department structure insulated from commercial pressure — a commissioning model that gives public broadcasters permission to greenlight radical, low-budget experiments without the usual ratings risk. The Flaws beat shows with bigger stars and production budgets, making the win a concrete validation of risk-friendly commissioning slots as a pipeline for breakout work.
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