Articles about ZDF
In the driving seat
Showrunner Eugen Tunik tells DQ how he wanted to look at the Ukraine war from a new angle with In Her Car, in which a therapist takes her clinic on the road to help a number of characters in distress.
Global swarming
The Swarm is the eagerly anticipated big-budget adaptation of Frank Schätzing’s ecological disaster novel. DQ buzzes around production designer Julian Wagner, director Barbara Eder and VFX supervisor Jan Stoltz to hear about filming in Italy, shooting in water tanks and creating a pod of sleeping whales.
Tourist trail
Australian actor Danielle Macdonald looks back on making Outback-set thriller The Tourist and reveals how she moved to LA as a teenager to follow her acting ambitions.
Seymour’s Wild ride
Harry Wild star Jane Seymour reflects on a career spanning 50 years on screen, her breakthrough roles and showing her comedic side.
Faroese fare
As Faroese drama Trom makes its UK debut, the cast and production team behind the series discuss filming challenges, language complications and why Nordic noir is still in demand.
Dancing queen
Svenja Jung tells DQ how she prepared to play a pair of twins in Der Palast (The Palace), a 1980s-set series in which two women from different sides of Cold War Germany discover they are sisters and swap places to try life on the other side of the Berlin Wall.
Breaking the Silence
Director Dalibor Matanić and actor Kseniia Mishina talk to DQ about Šutnja (The Silence), a crime drama based on real events and set between Croatia and Ukraine.
Wish you weren’t here
The Tourist writer Harry Williams and director Chris Sweeney take DQ on a trip to the Australian outback, where an amnesiac known only as The Man is searching for answers while being pursued by mysterious figures.
Getting Around
The stars of Around the World in 80 Days – David Tennant, Ibrahim Koma and Leonie Benesch – tell DQ about their adventure making this globetrotting period drama, which is pitched as a family-friendly take on Jules Verne’s classic tale.
New Blood
The team behind Vienna Blood talk about reuniting amid the pandemic to film the second season of the period drama, in which a young advocate of Sigmund Freud helps a veteran detective crack murder cases in 1900s Austria.
Christie done differently
Actors Johan Rheborg and Hanna Alström reveal what attracted them to their starring roles in Agatha Christie’s Hjerson, a Swedish series that offers a fresh and unique take on the crime writer’s work.
Built to last
The executive producers of German dramas Sturm der Liebe (Storm of Love) and Die Rosenheim Cops (The Rosenheim Cops) take DQ inside the making of these long-running dramas, which together have amassed more than 4,000 episodes.
Surface tension
DQ speaks to writer-director Friedemann Fromm and star Milena Tscharntke about German thriller Tod von Freunden (Beneath the Surface), in which the lives of two families are torn apart after a tragic accident.
Sommer time
The Sommerdahl Murders star Peter Mygind and creator Lolita Bellstar tell DQ about making the Danish blue-sky crime show and the importance of creating a friendly environment on set.
Dog days
Stars Josefin Asplund and Alexey Manvelov discuss the making of Swedish drama Top Dog, which centres on aspiring lawyer and an ex-con who forge an unlikely partnership.
Out of the shadows
DQ heads to Prague to meet the cast and crew of Shadowplay, a crime drama set in post-war Berlin where characters with competing agendas battle for power in a lawless city.
Agent secrets
Jan Guillou’s literary hero Carl Hamilton is given a contemporary update in Swedish action thriller Agent Hamilton. Star Jakob Oftebro and director Erik Leijonborg reveal how it was done.
Welcome to Windermere
The previously untold story of how hundreds of children came to the UK from concentration camps at the end of the Second World War is dramatised in The Windermere Children, a stark and poignant film commissioned to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
Explosive Agent
DQ lands in Stockholm to find a city-centre park taken over by filming for spy action thriller Agent Hamilton. The cast and creative team reveal their screen ambitions for Jan Guillou’s iconic literary character.
Murder in Vienna
Period crime drama Vienna Blood stands out as a unique European project, an adaptation of Frank Tallis’s novels that has been produced in English for German and Austrian broadcasters. DQ finds out more.