However, it is to be hoped that the daily life of a real media lawyer is different from that of Leo Roth. The successful boss of a law firm, who even uses Mimi Tahar (Michaela Caspar), a private investigator, to collect documents in order to exonerate her clients and intimidate the opposing party, does not shy away from any unsavory case or semi-legal trick. She offers her main adversary, the sordid tabloid journalist Götz Althaus (Stefan Kurt), who is not at all a baby Schimmerlos, photos to compensate for the renunciation of a story, which are not a reason for joy for the person represented in it. And also in her relationship with investigative journalist Jonas Lindberg (Jacob Matschenz), she is not grumpy. However, this also applies to how the media treats it. The series focuses on Leonie “Leo” Roth, a media lawyer who has her own law firm in Berlin. Through her work for various important clients, she has gained national renown. Their task is to represent them in public in the best possible way and to influence public opinion in their favour. In order to protect the privacy of its clients and defend them against public criticism, it sometimes resorts to illegal means. [2] “Thanks to the strategy of telling a case closed by episode and also an ongoing plot around Leo Roth`s involvement in a suicide, not a second passes in the ARD series in which something does not happen.” Legal Affairs” is told extremely quickly, addresses important topics and offers multidimensional figures.
All this makes the eight episodes so interesting to see. For example, it is a professional footballer whose health data reaches the Internet via the evaluation of his smartwatch. A huge thing in the press. (episode two). Or about a satirist collective called the Institute for Rosy Times (easily mistaken for the Center for Political Beauty), which shoots a cannibalistic satirical video with the resident of a refugee shelter. This is unfortunately taken seriously by a Nazi mob (episode three). Or about a mega-shitstorm sparked by a naïve Brandenburg Lisa with a photo that shows her happily posing with two local boys in Zanzibar. She posted it with the words: “Great holiday. Nice people. I hope I don`t have AIDS now. Smiley. Then she gets on the plane.
When she lands in Berlin, her life is ruined (episode six). Lavinia Wilson plays media lawyer Christian Schertz in an ARD series. A good idea? Let`s ask him. “Legal Affairs” has not become a review of spectacular media trials, although some facts are inevitably covered more frequently. Like privacy, for example, when some media want to publish reports on the state of health of an athlete or the love life of the son of a well-known filmmaker. Protection against hate on the Internet and fake news is also one of the regular tasks of a media lawyer. However, this alone cannot fill an eight-part series and create no arc of suspense. This requires more in a medium like television, in which dozens of people are murdered the night before. Even “Legal Affairs” cannot do without deaths, whether due to accidents or other reasons that will only be clarified later. Martina Kalweit, a freelance journalist from Hamburg, was an editor for TV Spielfilm for 20 years. During this time, she was also the author of the series` magazine, the TV supplement “Stern TV” and the film magazine “Cinema”.
Since 2003 member of the jury of the Roland Crime Prize as part of the festival “Tatort Eifel”. The great productions to come also dream above all of yesterday: on December 27, Das Erste takes the audience back to the so-called golden twenties with “Eldorado KaDeWe – Jetzt ist unsere Zeit”. And in early January, ZDF starts the new year with the opulent multi-party “Der Palast”, which tells the story of the division of Germany until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
