Over Christmas is a Christmas comedy-drama miniseries directed by Tobi Baumann and starring Luke Mockridge, Seyneb Saleh, Cristina do Rego, Lucas Reiber and Johanna Gastdorf.
Netflix is not shying away to be the official platform for Christmas this year. Every day it is launching a new Christmas delight. Today it launched the new German Christmas limited series Over Christmas.
I think the name of the series gives away how predictable it is. It starts off with a sad aspiring musician, Basti, who is too afraid to give an audition and is depressed over his year-old breakup. As the series starts, some people might be relieved to see that it is not all goody-goody and not everyone’s life magically gets better around Christmas.
Basti seems excited to meet his family because he thinks that they don’t have any issues. But as soon as he arrives, he finds out that his brother is in a relationship with his beloved ex-girlfriend and he senses some tension between his parents. After this, it is a series of his stupid childish behaviour that keeps making the situation a little more tense than before.
To get back to his brother, he sleeps with his brother’s first love. Although the writers have tried to show a natural attraction, the truth is that these two characters are probably not the best fit for each other. There is no chemistry between the two and it seems a little forced, to be honest. It is also a little fast-moving. But we just accept it as a part of the story and keeping our faith in the creators.
While in Christmas all the movies are portraying too-good-to-be-true families with so much joy in their hearts, Over Christmas has portrayed a family having a lot of internal problems. And even though all of them are trying hard to not ruin the Christmas spirit, at one point, it feels like they can’t go on until they talk about it.
The truth is that it is just like any other family drama series but with Christmas added to it in the hope to make it more festive. The characters and the stories feel extremely incoherent and do not gel well with each other. The disjointed narrative is magnified by the lack of relatable characters.
All the characters in Over Christmas seem like caricatures of people we have seen many times, and have no redeemable qualities for you to like. Our protagonist, Basti, constantly reminds us that he is anxious and sad and whatnot, but we don’t really see him express those feelings. It feels like we are watching this unfold from afar, but have no way of going close to it and understanding the nitty-gritties of the situation.
Overall, Over Christmas is an average entertainer that doesn’t bring anything new to the plate. This definitely isn’t a must-watch by a mile, but if you’re into a Christmas binge, then it’s an easy watch with some light entertainment.
Over Christmas is currently streaming on Netflix.
Read our other reviews here.
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