The Best TV Shows on RTL

The Bambi, often called the Bambi Award and stylised as BAMBI, is a German award presented annually by Hubert Burda Media to recognize excellence in international media and television to personalities in the media, arts, culture, sports, and other fields "with vision and creativity who affected and inspired the German public that year", both domestic and foreign. First held in 1948, it is the oldest media award in Germany. The trophy is named after Felix Salten's book Bambi, A Life in the Woods and its statuettes are in the shape of the novel's titular fawn character. They were originally made of porcelain until 1958, when the organizers switched to using gold, with the casting done by the art casting workshop of Ernst Strassacker in Süßen.

"Sisi" follows the extraordinary life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria. Modern, honest, and authentic. Told from the perspective of her closest confidants, the series takes a new look at the empress' life and reveals a multi-layered woman.

A gripping coming-of-age story set against the real culture wars and political events of Germany in the 1980s. The drama follows Martin Rauch as the 24 year-old East Germany native is pulled from the world as he knows it and sent to the West as an undercover spy for the Stasi foreign service. Hiding in plain sight in the West German army, he must gather the secrets of NATO military strategy. Everything is new, nothing is quite what it seems and everyone he encounters is harboring secrets, both political and personal.

Unter uns is a German television soap opera, first broadcast on RTL on 28 November 1994. Centered around the lives of the people in a residential house, which is set in the fictional Schillerallee in Cologne. Since the show debuted the baker's family Weigel is the series core family. Unter uns isn't based on a foreign soap opera like Verbotene Liebe or Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten. After Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten, the show was the second daily soap for RTL, followed years later in 2006 by Alles was zählt. The show aired its 3,500th episode on 30 December 2008.

A long-running German television series about a two-man team of highway police, originally set in Berlin and later in North Rhine-Westphalia.

The adventures of professional transporter Frank Martin, who can always be counted on to get the job done—discreetly. Operating in a seedy underworld of dangerous criminals and desperate players, his three rules are: Never change the deal, no names, and never open the package. Occasionally, complications arise and rules get broken.

Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten is a long-running German television soap opera, first broadcast on RTL in 1992. The programme concerns the lives of a fictional neighborhood in Germany's capital city Berlin. Over the years the soap opera tends to have an overhaul of young people in their late teens and early twenties; targeting a young viewership.

Balko is a German prime time television series broadcast on the private TV channel RTL. It is a police detective story with comical twists featuring two inspectors of the Dortmund police, Balko and his colleague Klaus Krapp. Balko's main characteristics are his coolness and his consistently laid-back appearance, whereas “Krappi” is a typical mama’s boy and very clumsy. The series started in 1995 and has won several television awards.

Deutschland sucht den Superstar is a German reality talent show, also commonly known by its initials DSDS. Part of the Idol franchise, it was created by English media mogul Simon Fuller as a spin-off from the British show Pop Idol, of which two series were broadcast between the years of 2001 and 2003. Debuting to mediocre ratings in October 2002 on the RTL network, the show has since become one of the most successful shows on German television. The program aims to discover the best singer in the country through a series of nationwide auditions in which viewer voting determines the winner. Voting is done through telephone and SMS text voting.

Medicopter 117 – Jedes Leben zählt is a German television series.

Alles was zählt is a German television soap opera first broadcast on RTL on September 4, 2006. The original plot revolved around Diana Sommer's dream to become a world class ice skater. She fell in love with Julian Herzog, who signed her at the prestigious Steinkamp Sport and Wellness Center, run by the unscrupulous Steinkamp dynasty. Diana and Julian eventually became a couple, but in November 2007, Julian suffered a brain hemorrhage and died during their wedding. Diana remained in Essen until January 2009, when she left to join a skating centre in Halle. The story continues to revolve around the Steinkamp Sport and Wellness Centre and its quest to become a sporting powerhouse, as well as the lives of the characters who work at and around the Centre.

Doppelter Einsatz is a German television series about the cases of two female detectives of the Hamburg police.