ON THE SCREEN
Dead North, Investigation Discovery, Nov 3, 9.30pm
IN October 2014, a 53-year-old man named Chris Regan was reported missing in Iron River, Upper Peninsula, a remote area of the US state of Michigan in national parklands close to the Canadian border. Chris’s former girlfriend reported his apparent disappearance to local police chief Laura Frizzo (pictured). Police investigated the missing man’s apartment and found his car abandoned outside of town, but no sign of Regan himself. Frizzo had few staff so she called in state police for help. They immediately suspected
Terri, but Frizzo disagreed. It soon became apparent that he had been having an affair with a married woman, Kelly Cochran, who worked at the factory where he was a supervisor, so suspicion then fell on Kelly’s husband, Jason. The couple was questioned by police but things turned out to be much more complicated than just a case of a jealous husband going after his wife’s lover. Frizzo would spend years on solving the mystery. A throughly gripping documentary series
OKTOBERFEST is one of Germany’s great events. Held almost every year in Munich since 1810 (it was cancelled this year because of the pandemic and has been in the past because of wars, financial disasters and disease outbreaks), it is steeped in tradition. Brewers bid every year for a licence to set up a tent to promote their beers at the Munich showground at which it is held every year. The size of the tents was long limited by organisers and by tradition. In 1898, Georg Lang, a Nuremberg innkeeper, bucked tradition and bought out other brewers to build a huge beer castle. This drama series draws some inspiration from that true story. In this, the unscrupulous Curt Prank (Misel Maticevic) uses some mafia-style tactics to take over other beer tents. Prank sets out to take on the staunchly traditional Ignatz Hoflinger (Francis Fulton-smith). But Ignatz’s son Roman (Klaus Steinbacher) also wants to shake things up at the family brewery and falls for Prank’s daughter Clara (Mercedes Muller). Great German melodrama.
Oktoberfest: Beer & Blood, Netflix