With its jaunty alliteration and on-the-nose allusion to the iconic puzzle books, it’s clear from the outset that Where’s Wanda? is not going to be an entirely serious missing-person drama. The first original German-language series from Apple TV+ chronicles Dedo and Carlotta Klatt’s desperate and increasingly illegal search for their 17-year-old daughter: it has been months since she disappeared, and day 100 – the point at which the chances of finding her alive tumble to just 10% – is on the horizon. Yet, the Klatts’ nightmare soon becomes a farcical caper, as they decide their best bet is to surreptitiously bug all the houses in their (mercifully tiny) home town of Sundersheim to check if their daughter is being held captive. Cue outlandish lies, ridiculous distraction techniques and a surprising amount of snake-based slapstick. Meanwhile, Wanda’s sardonic voiceover riffs on the tired tropes of missing-teenager stories in archly meta fashion.
At first, this makes for a rather strange watch. The fusion of dark crime thriller and riotous humour has proven extremely successful in recent years (see everything from Bad Sisters to Only Murders in the Building), but the horror of Wanda’s disappearance does make the combination less immediately appealing – especially given the glimpses we get into Carlotta’s inner turmoil. Her outbursts of fury and despair are conveyed with convincing ferocity by Heike Makatsch (who British viewers might recognise from Love Actually; she played Alan Rickman’s flirtatious, sleekly bob-haired secretary, Mia), yet it’s not long before we are thrust back into the comic realm via a disastrous break-in or ridiculous TV re-enactment of the morning Wanda (Lea Drinda) was last seen.
That said, later episodes do strike a more impressive balance between farce, feeling, and knotty conspiracy. With help from their son Ole, Carlotta and Dedo (Axel Stein) transform their basement into a multi-screen viewing room of their neighbours’ homes. Some secrets exposed by the hidden cameras are harmlessly kinky, others are sadder and weirder (the fact that the Klatts have to hide their activities from the police adds another layer of screwball tension). Even so, they struggle to find any obvious leads. For the viewer, clues to Wanda’s whereabouts build up steadily, but they are initially scarce: we see her take off on her red scooter on the morning of Nuppelwockennacht, an annual parade inspired by the legend of a Gruffalo-style mythical beast who haunts the bordering forest, emerging annually to kidnap a virgin. Our only hint as to Wanda’s fate is a shot of her red cape discarded on the forest floor. Clearly, there are some genuine monsters lurking in there, too.
This folkloric backdrop is the show’s main concession to its geography – in general, it doesn’t feel particularly German. On the upside, the generic small-town setting does mean that the Klatts’ world is immediately decipherable despite the language barrier. It also leaves the series relatively free of cartoonish cliche. On the other hand, those interested in getting an insight into the German comic sensibility may be disappointed to discover that the series was written by a Briton (Oliver Lansley, whose credits include co-writing the 2010 Alan Davies chef sitcom Whites).
All of which might leave you wondering: why bother in the first place? Yet the motivation behind the creation of Where’s Wanda? is not remotely mysterious. For streamers, foreign-language content is a double whammy: not only does it offer bored anglophobe viewers something out of the ordinary, but it caters to underserved audiences in the territory it was made in; the novelty for them is having a global streamer making programmes that feel local. In a dream scenario, the result is a global phenomenon such as Netflix’s South Korean thriller Squid Game.
Where’s Wanda? is unlikely to lasso the zeitgeist like that, but in a broader sense it is emblematic of this moment. In April, the New York Times coined the term “Mid-TV” to describe the current glut of well-written, well-acted, well-produced series that won’t take the world by storm but are hard to objectively fault. They are “good enough” – a phrase that keeps popping into my head while watching Where’s Wanda?. This series is just about funny enough, poignant enough, thrilling enough and compelling enough. It’s an entertaining, if not remotely unmissable, show. I can’t quite rave about Where’s Wanda?, but I can say that it is fine – good enough, in fact, to leave me hoping that the Klatts get to say the same thing about their daughter.
• Where’s Wanda? is on Apple TV+ now
