Agonising Sunday evenings with the queen of tearjerkers
13.2.2019
Translation: machine translated
Rosamunde Pilcher is dead. The woman who involuntarily accompanied me through several pre-pubescent Sunday evenings. But it was still nice somehow.
The couple seem happy. They live in the city and have started a new life, until she has to go back to her rural home for a few weeks. There she meets a great man who takes her much more seriously than the one in the city. She falls in love, and so does the new man. But there is a blatant misunderstanding that calls everything into question. Until her father suffers a heart attack, everything else becomes unimportant and the newly in love couple get together. Life in the city comes to an abrupt end. She is back in the lush meadows and rocky cliffs of Cornwall, happier than ever.
And every Sunday the groundhog greets us
Every ZDF novel adaptation of Rosamunde Pilcher goes something like this. The recently announced death of the English writer reminded me of this vividly. I could have sworn I was stuck in a kind of time warp every Sunday evening, watching the same film all the time. Most of the time, however, it was a new flick from the smut universe that my mother and stepmother forced on the whole family. Yes, my parents are divorced and yet I couldn't break away from the repetitive films. In both households, I had to subordinate myself to the programme, without exception. So it's surprising that my mum in particular was never able to fully embrace her passion. I often heard excuses along the lines of: "I don't watch films because of the plot, but because of the beautiful landscapes." Aha, mum, you could have just picked up a coffee table book.
People love films.
People love their kitsch
The appeal of the novels and their film adaptations is by no means limited to the women in my family. With around 65 million books sold, the queen of love stories is one of the most commercially successful authors of our time. The film adaptations on ZDF are watched by an average of over seven million viewers. In 2002, Rosamunde Pilcher was honoured with the British Tourism Award together with Claus Beling, ZDF's chief editor, because the films attract an exceptionally large number of German tourists to Cornwall. Sorry Mum, the landscape does seem to play an important role.
But the well-heeled, good-looking protagonists will also play their part in the film's success. The apparent family idyll with outdated role models and the cheesy storylines lull the audience rather than put them off. The content shown is far removed from viewers' lives and that seems to be the secret of its success - especially on Sunday evenings.
However, the old master of the humour show can also do things differently. A few days after her death, ZDF broadcast the latest Pilcher film "My Brother's Bride". And it is comparatively modern, as it centres on a gay footballer who struggles with his sexual orientation. This must have thrown viewers off course. Almost six million people gathered in front of their screens at home, giving ZDF the best viewing figures for a Pilcher film in over two years. My Wild Guess: It may have been more to do with the shock caused by the author's death than the plot.
A beautiful love-hate relationship
Well, mum and stepmum are not alone in their enthusiasm. Badly, they are in their family. At first, I read a good dose of shame on my father's face, and only slight disinterest in my sister. Over time, however, a kind of ritual developed from the Sunday film evenings. We were constantly cracking jokes about the films and the enthusiastic ladies, but gradually the rest of the family started to like the films too. Even though when we announced the programme from the TV guide - do they still exist? - we skilfully omitted the Pilcher every time, but we knew what to expect. And that was okay. The cheesy romantic films made the whole family laugh, provided conversation and somehow managed to create our own messed-up kind of family idyll. I never really learned to love the films, but I loved the evenings with my family all the more. Thank you for that, Rosamunde.
Header image: Image: ZDF
My life in a nutshell? On a quest to broaden my horizon. I love discovering and learning new skills and I see a chance to experience something new in everything – be it travelling, reading, cooking, movies or DIY.
