Moonlighting in Germany

Marko Meyer of Schneeberg, Germany, has contributed all of the following information:

The series is broadcast here under a different name: "Das Model und der Schnüffler", reading "The model and the snoop" when translated to English. This title is (at least in my opinion) a bad choice and held me away from watching the series for a long time.

It was first aired here by a channel named ARD (Allgemeine Rundfunkanstalt Deutschlands, or General Broadcasting Company of Germany) and its participants. (ARD is separated in originally 9 (now 11) regional companies, the so-called "Dritte Programme" – third programs.) First broadcasting took place around the time it also was broadcast first in the U.S. I think it was shown at that time in the former G.D.R. [East Germany –bcm] as well, but I'm not really sure, (although I lived in that area). As I mentioned above, I did not watch the series back then, because I hadn't heard about Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis at all and the title didn't tell enough (or too much, don't know) about what was going on there.

The series was then rebroadcast several times (at least partly) from the above mentioned regional ARD-companies. There might have been rebroadcasts by private German TV-channels as well (ARD is a company under public law), but I don't remember. (As an aside: I am trying to get more information about this subject here, at least it is for my interest, so please stay tuned.) I initially came across the series when it was aired by a private channel named RTL2 (RTL means Radio Television Luxemburg, but it is a German company) in 1994. They first showed it on a 5-times-a-week basis in their 7-to-8 p.m. time slot but then stopped for a while and moved it to a late-night-slot with very unreliable starting times. I don't know whether they also left out some episodes; at that time I did not know much about the series. At least I watched it because I had seen "Die Hard" and therefore knew who Bruce Willis was and I had seen several movies with Cybill Shepherd and this led me to watching the series. I watched the pilot film – currently they cut the pilot film into two regular episodes without special titles, in the table below I mentioned the pilot film as one episode to come closer to Brian Madsen's episode guide – and was amazed by the characters and their actors as well so I continued watching. Then I really got into the series when the episodes around "Blonde on Blonde" were aired and the David-Maddie-plot became thicker. I realised that it was a big mistake to not have taped the episodes. When the series ended I was very unhappy and browsed carefully through the TV-program journals to find a re-rebroadcast.

This moment came in March 1996 when the private channel TM3 (I don't know what this abbreviation means; TM3 advertises itself as a Woman's Channel) decided to start a rebroadcast in their 6-to-7 p.m. time slot. I began to tape the episodes and have not missed one of them yet. (And, since I watch and tape them simultaneously, I managed to cut off the adverts.)

So, current broadcasting times are: (on TM3, time in CET)

• Mo - Fr 12:55 to 13:45 (rebroadcasts of the day-before-episode)
• Mo - Fr 18:00 to 18:50 ("original" broadcast)
• Sa 10:40 to around 15:30 (all episodes shown in that week in order)

The series' episodes in Germany have titles which are different from the titles of the original episodes. Sometimes they are (as well as the main title) bad choices, but I must admit that some of the original titles are not understandable by the average German, even when translated. They are references to films, songs or proverbs, which are not existent (or existent with a different name or meaning) in Germany. This problem might be the same for you with the German titles, but for your interest I enclose a table with the original episode name, German episode name and translated German episode name.

Comments on German titles:

Footnote 1, from Brian Madsen: In English, this episode is known by two titles, and I'm not exactly sure why that is. My videotaped copy of this episode calls itself "Read the Mind … See the Murder", but I've also heard it referred to, from some sources, as "Read the Mind … See the Movie". I'm not sure where that title comes from, but I suspect it was a working title for the script, before it was changed at the last minute. Evidently the German episode title is based on that alternate name.

Footnote 2: This title is obviously a reference to the Ian Fleming novel "Casino Royale" even if the reference seems not to be that good....

Footnote 3: Like footnote 2, I can not provide some deeper meaning behind this title. Although the episode has to do with Ireland, I don't know if this is again a reference to a movie or something like that. If someone knows, please drop me a line.

Footnote 4: This is hard to translate (at least with my dictionary here). The title references a type of show where each event is announced by a girl walking across the stage holding up a plate with a number or event-title on it. If you know a correct English description please let me know. (Problem is: I can't find any reference to the actual plot of the episode from this title; but that's not the only title with that effect. As I mentioned: Sometimes the titles are really bad choices.)

Footnote 5: There exists an adjective named "einsam" in German, which means "lonely". The adjective "zweisam" (which is official German) is here a word-play on "einsam", since "Club der einsamen Herzen" (lonely hearts club) is a very common description for people (of the same sex) being together talking and drinking because they have not found a partner yet.

Footnote 6: A more literal translation of "Den Seinen gibts der Herr im Schlaf" would be something like, "Those who are His own, the Lord blesses in their sleep." But that doesn't properly communicate the thought behind the expression, which is that some people have success, not because of hard work, but because of dumb luck, because of lucky chance. It is somewhat like another German proverb which goes, "Die dümmsten Bauern ernten die größten Kartoffeln" (literally: "The dumbest farmers harvest the biggest potatoes"). So the episode title makes sense, because that's a pretty good description of what happens to David Addison in this episode.

Footnote 7: This episode title is a word-play on a German figure of speech. "Wahl" is the German word for "choice", and "Verwandtschaft" is a relationship, often (as in this case) a family relationship. Together, they form the word "Wahlverwandtschaft" – if you could choose your relatives, these are the ones you like very much, and would choose to have in your family. Meanwhile, "Qual" (which rhymes with "Wahl", by the way) is the German word for pain (especially intense, sharp pain or torment), from which comes the word "Qualverwandtschaft" meaning relatives whom you would not choose, because they are a pain. [This is Brian: when Marko explained this to me, I laughed hysterically. What a great pun! English needs a pair of words like these!]

Footnote 8: This title is taken from the Biblical expression from Matthew 22:14: "Viele sind berufen, aber nur wenige sind auserwählt" ("Many are called, but few are chosen").

Footnote 9: This is the same problem as in footnote 4. I try to find a better translation to that, but it is jargon, so this might be complicated. The idea behind is the following. Assume that your career is depicted as a graph on a wall. Then, each time you made some mistake, there will be a break (an angle) to force the graph to move downwards or even instead of upwards. So you might understand this as career breaks.

Footnote 10: This is possibly not translate-able at all. It is a word-play on a (relatively old) German song "Oh, mein Papa." (Oh, my Dad.) which is about a circus clown. It has no deeper meaning on behalf of the episode.

Footnote 11: This is also not really translate-able, since it is a word-play on the proverb "Eine verhängnisvolle Affaire" (A fatal affair). "Empfängnis" is in English "conception" and "empfängnisvoll" is not allowed German, so I created not allowed English by concatenating "-ful" to "conception", what is a good approximation of the real meaning.

Footnote 12: If we say "X für Arme" we mean that X is a cheap replacement for some Y. The X does (roughly) the same job as Y, but it probably does it slower or not that accurate, or at least it doesn't look so nice. This is very common for branded articles and their cheaper replacements. If we imagine a SONY VCR and compare it to some cheap NoName VCR we can say that the least is a "SONY für Arme", if it does the job right. This is usually used for technical equipment.

Footnote 13: This comes from a German proverb "Vom Regen in die Traufe", what is translated to "Out of the frying pan into the fire". But this translation does not hold for "Tinte" (ink), so I changed it a little bit to be more literally translated.

Footnote 14:

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Date of last change: 17 August 1996

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