“How has the time passed?” – A sentence like this is often heard when people meet again years after their school days. Natalie Scharf has her multi-part TV drama “Yesterday we were children” called, but this “that was only just” applies to her protagonists Anna and Peter Klettmann as well as to their daughter Vivi.
Just that with this story, which is already a seven-part series in the ZDF media library stands and now as a three-part television film (ZDF, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, each 8.15 p.m.) is broadcast, not just a little melancholy resonates. In fact, piece by piece long-ago secrets are revealed, the consequences of which are so dramatic that the viewer often takes his breath away.
The Klettmanns with their three children, the dog and the pretty little house seem like a happy dream family. But that changes abruptly when Peter (Torben Liebrecht) kills his wife Anna (Maria Simon) on the day of her 44th birthday and is arrested.
Can this really be? This question remains in the room until the end. Daughter Vivi (Julia Beautx), just turned 18 herself, is suddenly faced with the task of somehow keeping the rest of the family together. After all: Help comes completely unexpectedly from the young policeman Tim (Julius Nitschkoff).
Natalie Scharf tells the Klettmanns’ drama in two time periods (director: Nina Wolfrum). On the one hand from the perspective of Vivi, whose childhood ends so suddenly with the death of her mother and the arrest of her father. On the other hand, from the time when Peter, Anna and their best friend Luisa – played by Damian Hardung, Rieke Seja and Milena Tscharntke – were themselves high school graduates from the private school that Vivi later goes to.
With the difference that at that time Peter’s tyrannical father Hans (Ulrich Tukur) and his snuggled wife Heide (Karoline Eichhorn) were the parents and at that time events took their course that will later make you ask yourself again and again: What if you would have taken a different turn at this one point in life?
Will Vivi ask herself this question later? It’s not impossible. In the ZDF media library, “Yesterday we were still children” runs as season 1. And the plot is designed in such a way that a sequel is almost ideal.
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