The wait is over. The second season of the hit German financial crime thriller Bad Banks premiered today in the US.
The first season of Bad Banks was one of my favorite Euro TV premieres of 2018.
If you haven’t already seen Season 1, you’ll need to watch it on Hulu before jumping into the new season, as the latter continues the gripping story of unbridled ambition, greed, lust for power, and the machinations to fulfill them all by members of Germany’s financial industry.
Season 2 opens six months after the heart-pounding events in the Season 1 finale. Despite the government bailout, too-big-to-fail investment bank Deutsch Global Invest is a sinking ship, with 60% of its former 10,000-strong workforce having been let go. Deal-structuring wunderkind Jana Liekam (Paula Beer, Frantz, The Dark Valley) is still employed by DGI in Frankfurt, as are her team members Adam Pohl (Albrecht Schuch, A Dangerous Fortune) and Thao Hoang (Mai Duong Kieu, Wilsberg), but the work they do now is insignificant.
The trio would much rather be at DGI’s FinTech (financial technology) incubator in Berlin; they just need to craft a plan to get there. And they do. The question is, will it work? And will their boss, DGI executive Christelle Leblanc (Désirée Nosbusch, SOKO Stuttgart, Cenk Batu), let them go? It could prove difficult, since the head of the incubator is one of her biggest enemies. But never say never.
Christelle might be higher up DGI’s food chain, but she actually wields little power at the company. She is a pawn in the power-play game of board member and supposed ally Quirin Sydow (Tobias Moretti, (Inspector Rex, Anatomy of Evil) against the chairman, and she knows it. If there’s any silver lining in her situation, it’s that Christelle still has blackmail power over Jana and continues to use it to her advantage.
Meanwhile, DGI’s former head of investment banking, Gabriel Fenger (Barry Atsma, The Blood Pact, The Split), is still behind bars in Frankfurt, teaching his anger management group members about FinTech, robo-advisors, and the like. But not for much longer.
And Gabriel’s freedom puts him right back into Jana’s orbit…
Returning cast members include Marc Limpach (Freies Land), Germain Wagner (Detective Ellen Lucas), and Jean-Marc Barr (Blood on the Docks). Joining the Season 2 cast are Trystan Pütter (Perfume) and Noah Saavedra (Skylines).
Bad Banks: Season 2 is now streaming in the US exclusively on Hulu.
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