SPIDES
ALIEN INVADERS USE A RAVE DRUG TO FIND HUMAN HOSTS IN GERMAN-MADE SCI-FI SPIDES. SERIES WE GO ON LOCATION IN BERLIN
Just say yes to this druggy new German drama (note: not actual medical advice).
POP QUIZ: WHAT ARE YOUR TOP five German SF/fantasy TV series? We’ll give you a minute.
Finished your list? Okay, that was a little unfair. Recently there’s been timehopping Netflix show Dark. Otherwise, scouring our brains, all we can think of are 1966’s Raumpatrouille (best known here for its groovy lounge-jazz score), and Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1973 mini-series Welt Am Draht (World On A Wire). Oh, and ’70s cheese-fest Star Maidens was a German co-production. It’s fair to say making sci-fi television just isn’t really a German thing – especially the kind that can travel internationally.
The brainchild of showrunner/director Rainer Matsutani, Spides is his attempt to buck the trend. Set in modern-day Berlin, this eight-part series melds sci-fi, horror and conspiracy thriller with police procedural. A ’50s classic was a key inspiration.
“When I was 12,” Matsutani tells SFX,
“I turned on the TV and saw an old movie called Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, made by Don Siegel. It had a big influence on me. I was fascinated by the concept: people return, and they’ve completely changed. In those times it was an allegory for the Cold War. I think it still serves as an allegory for our modern life – with digitalisation and globalisation, many people have the feeling they’re losing their identity.”
This latest riff on the concept sees aliens from a dying planet seeking to supplant humanity through stealth. The means: Blis, a synthetic drug that young clubbers administer via eyedropper. The name of these invaders supplies the title.
“The Spides, on their home planet, are spider-like creatures, and have a hive mentality,” Matustani explains. “They’re organised like insects: they have a queen and then drones, and this plays an important part.”
Early episodes only give us brief glimpses of a Spide drone. Judging by the concept art we’re
shown, it’s a creepy creation. Featuring an obsidian surface, horn-like hair that rattles, and a subdermal glow which conveys emotion, it can also talk through a human, puppeteering them via tentacles which connect into the brain.
It’s fully revealed, in all its CGI glory, in the finale. But don’t expect to see Spides, in their true form, en masse.
“In our show, the aliens don’t land on ships and start a huge battle over the Earth,” Matsutani says. “Instead, with the help of human scientists, they come via alien DNA, given with this cheap drug. These kids disappear for two to three days after taking Blis, and when they return home they’ve totally changed their personality.
“We have two storylines,” he continues. “One is Nora’s, this young woman who awakens from a coma. The other perspective is two cops. One’s working for narcotics, the other’s from the missing persons department, and they hook up together to solve the case.”
Matsustani’s fellow producers, Alexander Kiening and Bernd Schloetterer, say this dual perspective gives the show broad appeal. Schloetterer describes the police angle as “very X-Files-ish in terms of target audience”. Meanwhile, Kiening says the story of Nora, who comes round with no memory of her previous life, will resonate for younger viewers. “The questions asked are, ‘Who am I?’ ‘What is my role in the whole community?’ ‘Who can I trust?’,” he says. “All these questions that young people ask themselves are in there.”
Rosabell Laurenti Sellers plays Nora Berger – and also, as the story unfolds, her secret twin, Sarah. “They’re two very different characters,” Kiening says. “One is a very hard girl, the other’s lost her memory – but still, she must not be recognised as a victim. She’s the main role, so she has to push things.” In doing so, Nora will unearth “dark family secrets” and “discover in herself an ominous force”, as she learns how central she is to the Spides’ plans. The coupling must happen…
COP CALLER
SFX gets a brief glimpse of the police investigation into Blis when we visit XBerg Tower, a Berlin office block formerly owned by German retail bank Postbank, which is now undergoing renovation.
A couple of vacant floors have been taken over by the Spides production team. The 21st has been dressed as the offices of the DCI, a special unit of the police, with all the usual cop show paraphernalia: boxes of files, maps and photos of weapons pinned to the walls. One small office is practically wallpapered with missing person posters.
In the scene being shot, a female officer is phoning a colleague to break some bad news. A countdown of “Eins, zwei, drei” leads into the familiar cry of “Action!”. One of the crew
Everything which is big effects, big action traditionally comes in from the States
reads out the other side of the call. “Someone shot up the safehouse where your witness is being held… Two cops dead.” An impending trial is now off the cards. “Without a witness, he’s a free man. They have no grounds to hold him.” The sequence goes smoothly (“Ist gut!”, someone remarks) – except that on take three the actress makes a complete hash of placing the handset back in its cradle, and bursts out laughing. This may be a German production, but gaffes are universal.
On the other end of the line is David Leonhart, a dishevelled narcotics agent played by Falk Hentschel – Hawkman in the Arrowverse shows. For Hentschel, born and raised in Germany, it’s his first time shooting in his homeland. We ask him to describe his character. “He’s pretty grumpy! He’s lost the love of his life to a botched case that he feels responsible for, and now has newfound motivation in uncovering a big conspiracy among the police department, connected to this new club drug. He’s forced to work with a new partner, and gets pretty angry. Deep inside he’s a nice guy – it’s just the loss that he’s dealing with.”
Though Hentschel’s character is working against the hive-mind Spides’ agenda, the actor can sympathise with it, to a degree. “They kind of have a benevolent goal of connecting everybody,” he explains. “I kept saying to Rainer, ‘I think they have a point!’ If everybody’s connected, and they don’t kill one another, there’s no wars, they feel good… it kind of feels like, ‘Sign me up!’ But then there’s the age-old question of what do you sacrifice by giving up individuality?”
Asked how Spides stands out from other shows he’s worked on, Hentschel plumps for the Berlin locations. “They just blew my mind. Every time I step on set I’m like, ‘Oh my God, this is so cool! You could not find this anywhere else.’ The modern-day, gritty Berlin gives it a lovely fresh tone, and grounds it.”
Hentschel isn’t the only cast member with previous when it comes to genre. Young female lead Rosabell Laurenti Sellers was Tyene Sand in Game Of Thrones, while missing persons cop Nique Navar is played by Florence Kasumba, Dora Milaje member Ayo in the MCU. All were cast in part because they had an existing global profile – just one way in which the producers deliberately took an international approach to broaden appeal.
INTERNATIONAL RESCUE
Five years ago, in its early stages of development, Spides was conceived rather differently, however. “We planned it initially as a German show,” Matsutani explains. “We made a trailer with German actors, and put a lot of effort into it, because we thought, ‘Nobody makes genre shows here, so we have to prove that we can make it.’ With this trailer we got a subsidy, a small amount of money for script development, and eventually came up with eight scripts.”
Then… nothing. “We got a pass from every network, basically,” says Kiening,
“Because they said, ‘Sci-fi, and people are being switched? This is not German!’” he explains.
“From a German point of view, for 50 years now there’s been no real sci-fi,” says Schloetterer. “Everything which is big effects, big action traditionally comes in from the States. People got used to it: these shows come from America – Star Trek, Andromeda, Stargate, whatever. I always hated that, because I was a big sci-fi fan!”
It took several years – and Schloetterer, with his international contacts, coming on-board – before the series was able to escape limbo by hooking Universal as partners. It also required a change of direction. “It was a German approach, and we changed it to an international one,” Schloetterer says.
How? By switching to an English-speaking cast, for starters. While the eight scripts were initially written by a German writers’ room, an additional American writer was then hired to rework translations. The series also has an American editor.
“There are some pacing things,” Schloetterer explains. “Some arcs are more like an American show. And Berlin is more generic. It’s not in-your-face Berlin – it’s not the Brandenburg Gate and the Victory Column. It’s more the cool underground scene of Berlin.”
All concerned are hopeful that by showing German-made genre TV can have global appeal, Spides could play a part in changing other perceptions.
“Fifteen years ago, you couldn’t give away a Scandinavian crime show!” Schloetterer points out. “You do one or two that work and people will say, ‘Fantastic!’ When we went around with international concepts, there were several countries open to becoming partners. So I believe that if another good concept comes out of Germany, there are other open doors.”
Who knows – perhaps one day you’ll be able to reel off your five favourite German sci-fi shows without hesitation?
Spides is airing now on Syfy UK, every Tuesday night.