The Best TV Shows on ARTE

Durch die Nacht mit … is a German documentary film television series produced by ZDF for Franco-German television channel ARTE. Locations are mainly in France or Germany. The title of the French version is Au cœur de la nuit. Two Celebrities spend an filmed evening together. One of them is the host who sets the location and the program. There is no moderator.

Two friends, one former top chef just out of prison and one top sommelier with an alcohol problem, struggle to get their dream restaurant off the ground.

At the height of the Cold War in 1960, André Merlaux joins the French Secret Service and contends with enemies both foreign and bureaucratic.

Berlin, 1888. After penniless Ida’s life is saved at the Charité Hospital she must work off the treatment costs. While she becomes acquainted with the most brilliant physicians of this era at the world-famous hospital, the self-determined young woman discovers her passion for medicine.

Those who knew them best describe the sensational lives and premature deaths of iconic actors and musicians whose passing left a void in pop culture.

Ambitious Jana is confronted with the unscrupulous machinations of the world of finance. Her working life is determined by egotism, the pressure to succeed and machismo. She soon has to decide how far she is prepared to go for her career.

The fairytale river landscape of the Spreewald, the flocks of birds of the North Frisian Wadden Sea and the striking chalk cliffs on the island of Rügen. You can see unique landscapes and their fauna in the different regions of Germany.

Dramatic events unfold in Croatia and Ukraine. The first girl drowned, the second one died from a drug overdose. The main suspect in these deaths, however, soon turns out to be innocent - and dead too. While detective Vladimir and reporter Stribor struggle to solve these murders in Croatia, the niece of Olga, an Ukrainian philanthropist, goes missing in Kyiv.

Bands perform in Berlin's legendary club TRAFO, the concrete temple music.

This German format is not a series properly speaking, as it has no permanent cast or script continuity, but presents each time a 45 minutes documentary, usually in part presented as a docudrama (not faction, as close to scientific knowledge as possible, but visually attractive), elaborating a specific historical theme, widely varied, often exotic in the sense of a far time (as far back as prehistoric times) and/or place (around the globe), although some episodes fit together well, chronologically or thematically, but always fit to be watched separately. Usually authentic locations are used, as well as scenes from and/or interviews about the scientific research it is based upon.

Words, rituals, objects, references... Karambolage offers an amused comparative anthropology of the locals on both sides of the Rhine.