Switch

Switch! and its successor, Switch Reloaded, are German comedy shows, which parody other TV shows (and occasionally, movies) from Germany, the United States and sometimes other nations. The sketches are pretty short - just like what you'd get if you switch the channel all the time.

Unrelated to the American Crime and Punishment Series with Eddie Albert and Robert Wagner.

Some of the shows parodied by Switch!:

• Columbo
• ER
• Flipper
• The German version of Jeopardy!
• Quincy
• Star Trek: The Next Generation
• The Waltons
• The Winnetou films
• The X-Files

Some of the shows parodied by Switch Reloaded:

• Bones
• CSI: Miami
• Dr. House
• Lasko - Die Faust Gottes
• Let's Dance (German version of Strictly Come Dancing)
• The German version of Solitary.
• The German version of Supernanny
• Das Supertalent (German version of America's Got Talent)
• Germany's Next Topmodel
• Stromberg
• Two and A Half Men
• Valkyrie
• Wer wird Millionär? (German version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?)

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Tropes used in Switch include:

• Adults Dressed as Children: Hoecker and Nadolny, regularly.
• Asian Airhead: Mi Lei Long Di Do Di Delü, music channel moderator
• As Himself: Hoecker does this when they are spoofing Genial daneben, a Celebrity Game Show in which he belongs to the regular cast.
• Ax Crazy: Mona Sharma as Natalie Imbruglia.
• But You Screw One Goat!: They have to guess the word "zoo" on Hot Streak, so the first player starts with "you like animals, don't you?", and the second player suspiciously counters, "What do you mean by that?", and it ends with, "But that happened just one time!"
• Calvin Ball: Langeoog-Lochen and other games suggested by Hoecker are this.
• Camp Gay: The prisoners in "Hinter Gitterchen - der Männerknast" (behind little bars - the men's prison).
• Catch Phrase: Several.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Kommissar Schimanski ups the real deal to eleven.
• Crossover: What about Terminator meets Louis de Funes?
• The Danza: "Alle und wir" has Tim as Tim, Tom as Tom, Lola as Lola and so on.
• Department of Redundancy Department: "Hier ist Deutsche Welle Polen, mit Übertragung in Farbe! Und bunt!" (Untranslatable - "in Farbe" and "bunt" both mean "in color".)
• Detective Animal: Taken Up to Eleven in their Inspector Rex parody with "Polizeiobst Melanie" - Melanie being a melon!
• The Dev Team Thinks of Everything: Switch often seems to spare no effort to catch the feel of the shows they are spoofing, like creating sets that look uncannily close to the real ones. ^[1] Another example is that somehow parodies of American Series actually sound as if they were dubbed.
• The Ditz/Dumb Blonde: Many female moderators, especially if played by Susanne Pätzold.
• Foe Yay: Hauser and Kienzle (two German co-moderators from a show about politics. One of them's a leftist, the other one a rightist. Switch! exaggerates, but didn't pull it out from thin air.)
• German Humor
• IKEA Erotica: Again, Deutsche Welle Polen once.
• The Ingenue: The young Christians.
• Kent Brockman News: The parodies of Heute, the News Broadcast from the channel ZDF. And after the real Heute did introduce a virtual studio, Switch! gleefully incorporated it into its spoofs.
• Loads and Loads of Characters: Alle und wir (everyone and us), a parody of Daily Soaps. With Tim, Tom, Jim, Lola, Lale and Lolita, but still without Robin... but many, many others.
• No Swastikas: Quite remarkably for a German show, this is subverted to Refuge in Audacity levels in Obersalzberg (a parody of Stromberg, the German version of The Office). Here, none other than Adolf Hitler is the Expy for the Stromberg/Brent-character. And swastikas are everywhere in plain sight: On the wall papers, on coffee mugs, as patterns on clothes...
• Paper-Thin Disguise: The comedians play the game "Who am I?" (where you put a sticky note with the name of a famous person on your forehead). One of them (a bald guy!) guesses correctly that he's supermodel Claudia Schiffer and says it out loud. Then, suddenly fans of Claudia ask for his autograph, and a photographer pays him to shoot a topless photo. Until the sticky note falls off...
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Friedrich Nietzsche stating his famous "God is dead" (sorry, I meant: "God! Is! DEAD!!!"). Parodies an infamous German telephone sex ad with a dominatrix saying (rather narmy): "Ruf! <whips> Mich! <whips> AN!!! <whips>" - "Call me now!")
• Punny Name: Bülbül Hekmek.
• Recycled In Medieval Times: Last episode of first season. Complete with Burn the Witch ("Sorry, I had to practice") and Das althe verhacksthückthe Teutsch.
• Running Gag: "Hoecker, you're out!" - "But why?"
• Ruritania: Deutsche Welle Polen shows how Westerners would imagine a stereotypical TV show from a former Warsaw Pact country (like Poland in this case).
• Sassy Turkish Woman: Bülbül Hekmek of TRT Früstük.
• Speech Impediment: Martina Hill as RTL Punkt 12 anchorwoman Katja Burkard, or while telling hilarious nonsense about the stock market as Anja Kohl.
• Spell My Name with an "S": Bernhard Hoëcker, to show that his name is pronounced Ho-ecker, not Höcker, since in German, usually oe = ö.
• The Stoic: Heidi Pršblybzçka, anchorwoman of Deutsche Welle Polen.
• Stylistic Suck: Deutsche Welle Polen.
• Telepathy: Used by the team "telepathy sisters" on their parody of Hot Streak. Of course, they don't really have trouble to win.
• That Makes Me Feel Angry: Heidi regularly informs us how she feels (excited, frex). From looking at her face, you could never tell..
• Theme Naming: The young Christians are named Hanni, Nanni and Manni. Alle und wir also uses this.
• Those Wacky Nazis: Obersalzberg (see No Swastikas)
• True Art: Parodied with a "theme evening" of German-French TV station arte. The theme? "The dung heap".
• Unexplained Recovery: Mona Sharma was burned in the medieval version of "Facts, facts, facts", but returned in later seasons.
• What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?: Nelly van Sale and Mister Snoot, parodying various sales channels.
  • Also, a candidate in Wetten Dass (very popular German show where people bet that they can achieve something Crazy Awesome, like recognizing the color of crayons by taste) bets that he can take ten glasses and put them, in just ten minutes, NEXT to each other - with his four helpers!
• What Do You Mean It's Not Heinous?: Hanni of the young Christians calling Manni a "dummyhead".
• What the Hell Casting Agency: A deliberate example is Hoecker, whose height is 159 cm, playing Thomas Gottschalk, a famous show host who in Real Life is 193 cm tall.

1. ↑ If the show spoofed is from the same TV channel or channel group, the set may perhaps even be the real thing!