SPIDES LIKE US

ALIEN INVADERS USE A RAVE DRUG TO FIND HUMAN HOSTS IN GERMAN-MADE SCI-FI SERIES SPIDES. WE GO ON LOCATION IN BERLIN

- IAN BERRIMAN

POP QUIZ: WHAT ARE YOUR TOP five German SF/fantasy TV series? We’ll give you a minute.

Finished your list? Okay, that was a little unfair. Recently there’s been time-hopping Netflix show Dark. Otherwise, scouring our brains, all we can think of are 1966’s Raumpatrouille (best known here for its groovy lounge-jazz score), and Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1973 mini-series Welt Am Draht (World On A Wire). Oh, and ’70s cheese-fest Star Maidens was a German co-production. It’s fair to say making sci-television just isn’t really a German thing – especially the kind that can travel internationally.

The brainchild of showrunner/director Rainer Matsutani, Spides is his attempt to buck the trend. Set in modern-day Berlin, this eight-part series melds sci-fi, horror and conspiracy thriller with police procedural. A ’50s classic was a key inspiration.

“When I was 12,” Matsutani tells SFX, “I turned on the TV and saw an old movie called Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, made by Don Siegel. It had a big influence on me. I was fascinated by the concept: people return, and they’ve completely changed. In those times it was an allegory for the Cold War. I think it still serves as an allegory for our modern life – with digitalization and globalization, many people have the feeling they’re losing their identity.”

This latest riff on the concept sees aliens from a dying planet seeking to supplant humanity through stealth. The means: Blis, a synthetic drug that young clubbers administer via an eyedropper. The name of these invaders supplies the title.