Series Review: "We Are the Wave" ("Wir sind die Welle") (2019).

"How loud do we have to be to wake everyone up?" This is We Are the Wave (Wir sind die Welle). This German coming-of-age drama series created by Jan Berger, Dennis Gansel, and Peter Thorwarth, and loosely based on the 1981 novel The Wave by Todd Strasser. A group of teens pursue dreams of a better future, led by a new student who recruits four outsiders for the fight. But soon it takes an unexpected turn.

In late April 2018, Netflix announced the series as part of its event See What's Next in Rome, which at that time still bore the working title The Wave. By early February 2019, Ludwig Simon, Luise Befort, Michelle Barthel, Daniel Friedl, and Mohamed Issa were cast. At the same time, principal photography commenced and wrapped in early May. Filming took place in Cologne, Hürth, Leverkusen, Düren, Euskirchen, Neuss, Wuppertal, Solingen, Gelsenkirchen-Ückendorf & Hassel , Remagen, and Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia.

The series stars Simon, Befort, Barthel, Friedl, and Issa. These kids are confused and pained, and their parents don't have much of a clue about what's happening. Or to quote the song, same as it ever was. We're not sure if Befort's Lea, the main character in the show is supposed to be a genuine activist or not. But seeing this preppy upper class girl become a social activist will be an interesting watch.

The show doesn't offer a nervous, judgmental look at three messy teenagers or let them off the hook, but it does explore how two teens of sub economical backgrounds and one upper class teen build their identities on their own terms. Too high-minded for momentum yet unable to muster nuance or insight from it standard and less-textured characters, the show is shallow without the simple pleasures of trashy streaming. The show can best be described as occasionally cute, but mostly muted and sleepy, as though the first draft of a read through were filmed and turned into a series. Could it be a fun binge? Possibly. The episodes are all more than thirty minutes, so a binge of the whole season would only be about six hours. But it would end up being a binge that leaves you feeling empty at the end of it. As a story about three high-school teens from various yet convenient backgrounds who become unlikely friends and an unlikely group of vigilante social activists, who are allies in a way that's both supportive and a little destructive, the show is an adequate European teen show. The show satisfies in its final couple of episodes by switching to a character-driven focus that lets its main leads have the final word on how we view them, and how they view themselves. It's still somewhat dull. It still has the ring of truthfulness and it still has a keen awareness of pop-culture and nerd ephemera that works against both the characterisations and the action scenes. And it has perhaps less confidence than any other European teen shows before it.

Simon says We Are the Wave (Wir sind die Welle) receives: