Saturday, July 13, 2013

German keystone cops

Our regulars know we don't do TV.

Saves us from a lot of trash but also means we miss some great topics for blog posts.

But today, we were lucky. A visit to a hospitalized friend of the K-Landnews gave us an unexpected insight into a German reality TV cop show.

If you have watched or heard of the American show COPS, reign in your imagination.

The fifteen minute segment of German TV was a "meter maid" show. The main highlight was the mode of transportation, which was neither a three wheeler with the dramatic sounding name "interceptor" nor a bicycle.

The meter men, there was no woman among the crew in our segment, had Segways and was patroling the pedestrian zone in a medium sized German town.

Our stingy TheEditor instantly showed minor frothing at the edges of the mouth: "What a waste of taxpayer money! They could buy ten bicycles for one Segway!"

The next highlight was the black uniform the men sported. We could not decide whether they were meant to look like nightclub bouncers or like an off-duty SWAT team, but the close cropped officers radiated authority despite the nerdy vehicles.

In the presence of the camera, they seemed to be taking their job of enforcing public order more seriously than might be the case off camera.

They were earning their keep by handing out 5 to 10 euro tickets for minor infractions, and the objects of their attention were not pleased.

As they wrote up a motorcyclist who had ventured into the pedestrian zone, the camera panned to show the face of the offender, a male of around the same age as the keystone cops, and we went "oh".

The face of the perp was pixelated, which made the scene look strangely surreal because neither the officers nor curious bystanders clutching shopping bags and pointing, for their children, towards the camera team, received the pixelation treatment.

The pixelation did have a slightly more reddish hue than the other faces, an indication that the anonymous perpetrator showed a sign of blush of embarrassment, his voice supported this interpretation because he sounded neither angry nor unduly upset.

We laughed.

No comments:

Post a Comment