, “Dear Vivi,” the biggest series hit to date on ZDFmediathek, the VOD service of German public broadcaster.
In Germany, “Dear Vivi” has set new online records, its seven episodes, which launched on ZDFmedaithek on Dec. 30, punching online almost 21 million views, or three million views per episode. Written and produced by successful German TV writer Natalie Scharf, behind one of ZDF’s longest-running series, “Frühling,” , “Dear Vivi” begins with Vivi, 16, limping down a street to a pharmacy and then collapsing in tears in a delayed reaction to discovering some hours before that her dad, Peter, has killed her mum.
“I guess it had to end in catastrophe one day. No secret stays buried for ever. The dirtier the secret, the harder it tries to come to light,” Peter writes to Vivi from prison in an initial voiceover. Growing up in a psychiatric ward where here father worked as a psychologist, as a portrait in Germany’snotes, Scharf, whose Seven Dogs Film Produktion produced “Dear Vivi,” has a fine sense of how people enact their lives, constructing images of themselves far from reality.