German Wanderlust

"His company's gone bankrupt and his house has been put up for auction -- [the Spanish island of] Lanzarote is the only chance for Udo to escape a life of unemployment."

A German getting a new start abroad is the basic premise of every episode of "My New Life (XXL)," a show on private TV channel Kabel Eins. For the past year, similar programs such as "Goodbye Deutschland" or "Moving to a New Life" that accompany Germans on their foreign adventures have also been highly successful on most other German private broadcasters.

Not all of the protagonists actually leave Germany for financial reasons, but the fact that most of them head out without any preparation -- armed only with a heavy dose of naivety -- is a must for the show.

Showing a broad spectrum of emigrants

The producers, however, try their best to avoid the impression that they're trying to profit from the fate of losers.

"We're not interested in seeing people falter," said a spokesperson for Kabel Eins, adding that the broadcaster was instead interested in showing a broad spectrum of emigrants.

According to its makers, the show's success is based on a good mixture of exotic locations and suspenseful stories. People, whose companies take care of their move to a different country, are simply too boring for the program. Something should go wrong for the viewer to stay interested.

A bit of failure keeps people entertained

The shows are certainly not lacking in entertainment value as new houses regularly turn out to be falling apart, moving containers end up being too small and mothers get pushed to the edge of a nervous breakdown because of their moody, pubescent children.

Grateful viewers reward the producers: Despite a large number of similar shows, some one million people watch each episode -- that's about 8 percent of the advertisers' favorite target group of 14 to 49-year-olds.

Few people seem to mind that the program's not really a documentary, but rather a docu-soap. There's tears every couple of minutes -- for example when the wife of Udo, the emigrant to Lanzarote, needs to part with her beloved plants on the big day of bidding farewell to Germany.

Not quite a pioneer effort

Kabel Eins is trying to take credit for the success and calls the show an original program even though that's not entirely true. The first emigrant documentary series, called "Get a New Life," was aired by BBC Scotland three years ago.

The show was a bit different -- more like a time-limited survival contest with a job placement and a final decision on whether the new emigrants would be allowed to stay abroad or not. In Germany's there are no time constraints -- but also no assistance.

Still, the show has a certain educational factor as many of the 155,000 Germans that emigrate on a yearly basis fail with their dream -- whether because they don't have enough money, because they lack the necessary language skills or because they embark on their life-changing adventure without a job offer or any idea what to expect once they get to their destination. Such people might be better prepared if they learn something about other people's problems.

Satisfying people's wanderlust

"Entertainment's still the main purpose of the show," said Dagmar Unz, a media psychologist at the University of Saarbrücken. She added that while viewers do learn how to react in certain situations by watching the program, the show is much more about satisfying people's wanderlust.

The shows offer a space to people who believe that they can make their dreams come true -- against all cultural and economic odds. That's why the programs create the image of a perfect globalized worker, somebody who is willing to uproot themselves and their families in search of a new job.

Like Guido, a former Lufthansa pilot, who -- together with his wife and children -- begins a new life in the Costa Rican jungle. He wants to set up a hotel with a flight school for ultra small planes.

Spin-offs in the making

Future plans at Kabel Eins also show that commercial interests certainly play a role in producing the program.

The broadcaster is already developing a new show, called "My New Job," which is expected to air at the end of the year and will have three people compete for a desirable job, such as working in a Harley Davidson shop on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca.

It's high time for German emigrants to join the current casting show mania.