We all know that a well-written drama can have a lot of effective comedy in it and vice versa. But it’s not easy to pull off, especially if the comedy has to be balanced with an underlying story that’s dead serious. The shows that can pull this off are rare, but they provide a viewing experience that’s surprisingly compelling, as this new German dramedy streaming on Apple TV+ demonstrates.
Opening Shot: The words “Day 84” etched in glass. Two workers in coveralls get out of a van outside the house.
The Gist: Carlotta and Dedo Klatt (Heike Makatsch, Axel Stein) are in those coveralls; they are at a pregnant woman’s house, telling them they’re there to check her smoke detector, free of charge. She actually recognizes them from news reports about their missing 17-year-old daughter Wanda (Lea Drinda), so she lets them check. While Carlotta and the woman talk, Dedo tries to install a spy camera in the detector. A feisty dog slows Dedo down, but he manages to do so. They contact their son Ole (Leo Simon), who adds the feed to the bank of monitors that are watching their other neighbors.
Wanda narrates the story of her disappearance and how her family took control of finding her. She goes back to the day she went missing on Nuppelwocken Night, a yearly celebration in their tiny German town of Sundersheim. People in town dress up in costumes, they have a parade, it’s a whole thing. We see Wanda arguing with Carlotta over the skimpiness of her costume and how she feels she’s old enough to be treated like an adult. Then she sets off on her Vespa, but we soon see the red cape she was wearing lying in the woods.
We cut to day 68, when Wanda says “it really gets weird.” The Klatts go on a news show about Wanda’s disappearance, and Carlotta gets ticked about being goaded into showing emotions for the camera, whereas Dedo is worried that he is wearing so much bronzer he looks like Donald Trump and that his chair on the set keeps sinking.
After being frustrated with the pace of the police investigation, they decide to take matters in their own hands, especially after Dedo sees a person of interest in a file on the lead detective’s desk. But that goes disastrously wrong, but Dedo comes up with a more systematic plan. Good thing, too, as the chances of Wanda being found alive goes way down at the 100-day mark.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Kidnapped meets Breaking Bad meets Mad About You.
Our Take: Created by Oliver Lansley, Where’s Wanda? somehow manages to balance the dramatic and comedic aspects of its story, mainly because of the same reason we cite for all of our favorite comedies: The comedy relies on the characters instead of gags, and the Klatts are funny because they’re in such pain, not despite the extreme circumstances they face.
The idea is that Carlotta and Dedo are like most married couples that are a couple of decades into it and have two teenage kids: They’re at odds, and the kids feed into the tension. Ole, who is hearing impaired, escapes by turning his hearing aids off. But it seems that the search for Wanda is going to bring the family together in a way that they haven’t been since Ole and Wanda were little.
The funny comes from the family taking matters into their own hands. So when things turn disastrous at the first house they look into on their own, we can laugh even though we know that what their goal — to get Wanda back — is pretty serious.
Don’t get us wrong: There are some funny lines, especially the threat the police detective in charge of the case, Michelle Rauch (Nikeata Thompson), gives them after the first time they go off on their own. But Lansley and his writers lean on those sparingly, so they’re funnier when they come up.
What we’re not sure about is Wanda’s narration. Is she narrating from some sort of voice over version of the Great Beyond? Or is she talking about this in retrospect because she’s still alive? It’s not clear, and as usual, the narration can get intrusive at times.
Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.
Parting Shot: We see the cape in the woods; a shot rings out, then we see a growling figure in the background.
Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to Nikeata Thompson as Detective Rauch, mainly because we know she’s going to have to tolerate the Klatts’ antics as they go rogue.
Most Pilot-y Line: None we can find, aside from the idea that there was no blowback from Carlotta walking out on the news special about Wanda’s case.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Where’s Wanda? is engaging and funny, but effectively shows how two parents wanted to be active in the search for their missing daughter.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.