Bad Banks

Christian Schwochow's Bad Banks launched on ZDF / Arte in February 2018 and ran for two seasons across twelve episodes through 2020, with Schwochow directing the entire first season and the second helmed by Christian Zübert. The series was developed by Oliver Kienle, the screenwriter behind the German feature 4 Kings (2015), and produced by Letterbox Filmproduktion in cooperation with the Luxembourg-based Iris Productions — the same Luxembourg-tax-credit pipeline that had produced parts of Stranger Things's European footprint.

The cast is led by Paula Beer, then twenty-two years old and one of the most recognised faces of contemporary German cinema after her César-nominated performance in Frantz (2016) and her later Berlinale Silver Bears for Undine (2020) and Afire (2023). Désirée Nosbusch — a Luxembourgian actress with a long European career — plays the senior managing director who recruits her; Albrecht Schuch (later System Crasher, All Quiet on the Western Front) and Tobias Moretti round out the principal cast.

The series won the Grimme-Preis for Best Fiction Series at the 2019 ceremony — the most prestigious prize in German television — and the Bavarian TV Award for Best Director (Schwochow), Best Actress (Beer) and Best Production. It is now widely cited in academic studies of contemporary European television as one of the foundational works of the so-called German Quality TV period that produced Babylon Berlin, Dark, Deutschland 83 and 4 Blocks in the same five-year window.