Here, too, on the net!
The protagonists: Mai und Arndt Brunner, a married couple from the small German town of Weinheim, their neighbours Sandra and Gregor and their friend Christoph – two couples and a single. On Monday evening their lives were still full of plans, but by Friday no stone was left standing. Things that had always seemed certain had now been called into question. What happened?
Five people in the midst of life, full of critical questions, but with few answers: these were the leading characters in the “Zeit der Helden” TV series - and on this website! It was here that you could pry into their lives while the TV show was being broadcast. Text messages, photos, videos, posts on websites - every little titbit of information revealed a little more about our “heroes”.
“Real-Time” is the name of the game - on all channels.
Every evening from 25th to 29th March 2013 the TV show offered not one, but two glimpses of life with the Brunners and their friends: at 8.15p.m. for 45 minutes and once again at 10 p.m. for 30 minutes. In real life, however, people do not go off air - and that applies to the Web, too. Users were able to look at the timeline to follow the sequence of events and throughout the day users could gain even more insights into the lives of the “heroes”.
The website also had a special challenge up its sleeve for all those people who wanted to delve actively into the world of the “heroes”. Viewers were invited to take part in a game that was on at the same time as the TV show - a game in which they were to discover the story before the story. What has made Arndt and Mai, Sandra, Gregor and Christoph who they are today? Why were they so self-critical and dissatisfied, so unsure of themselves? On the zeitderhelden.de website users could embark on a voyage of discovery and face up to the challenge. The task was - “Give the heroes their memories back! If they want to face up to the challenges of the present, they have to know their past.”
Over 80,000 users took up the challenge and in the course of five days were able to discover all the hidden riddles and hints. They were able to share their discoveries on Facebook and Twitter and there was a great exchange of ideas about which direction the plot of the online game and the TV show was going to take.
The press praised “Zeit der Helden” as “a stroke of luck for TV entertainment” (Spiegel Online), “a veritable masterpiece in family entertainment” (Stuttgarter Zeitung), that was “splendidly and wittily written” ist (Hessische Allgemeine), the “TV of the future – sitting back and enjoying it: OK, getting involved in it: better!” (Welt.de), “The ‚Zeit der Helden‘ web presence is also a glimpse of the future” (Teleschau).
Find out more about the week’s programs on SWR television and ARTE at swr.de/40plus and arte.tv/40plus.
For information on the TV series go to www.zeroone.de.