Danni Lowinski

Plot

Daniela "Danni" Lowinski (Annette Frier) is a trained hairdresser who received her qualification for college (in Germany called Abitur) doing evening classes and then managed to major in law successfully. After graduating, she wants to work as lawyer but no lawyer's office is willing to employ her. In sheer desperation she has the idea to lease space in a mall where a simple table and two chairs form a small helpdesk. The helpdesk offers people the opportunity to have Danni deal with their legal matters for just one Euro per minute. Of course this leads to Danni attracting rather unusual clients, whose problems she solves in an equally unusual manner.

In each season she is assisted by her best friend and barista Bea Flohe (Nadja Becker) as well as people from adjacent stores in the mall. In her private life, Danni has to deal with her father Kurt (Axel Siefer), whom she lives with.

In the first season her friends from the adjacent stores are Persian locksmith Rasoul (Elyas M’Barek) and Nils (Oliver Fleischer), a massage therapist, as well as Dr. Oliver Schmidt (Jan Sosniok), a fellow attorney who works in a lawyer's office located in the mall. She starts a relationship with Oliver with whom she breaks up in the final episode about a professional problem.

In the second season Hannes Stüsser takes over the locksmith business and the mall has a new security guard Sven Nowak. She starts a relationship with Sven and she finds out that there is a homicide case against him from his former job in the police where she asks access to records at the state attorney. She has mixed feelings about Oliver and Sven and both of them press her to make a choice in the final episode.

In the third season it is revealed that Sven had quit, now being on a job in Leverkusen. He is replaced by Svenja Müller. Nils runs a junk shop now and it is later revealed that Hannes has begun law studies. One thread follows Bea's relationship - in the beginning a loose triangle with Nils and Hannes and later Dustin which however turns out to be a drug dealer facing a jail sentence. The other thread is about Oliver who initiates a formal contract sending down a couple of cases - that includes a big lawsuit against a pharmaceutical that makes for key scenes in the final episode.

Cast

Production

Danni Lowinski is produced by Berlin-based producer Phoenix Film. The show was created by Marc Terjung and Benedikt Gollhardt, who also created Edel & Starck (2002–2005), another successful Sat.1 Dramedy.

Danni Lowinski is distributed internationally by SevenOne International.

Reception

Danni Lowinski turned out to be a hit dramedy, allowing Sat.1 to achieve significant ratings with the target audience and to win the title of highest-rated show on 5 July 2010. Shortly after the first month of broadcasting, Danni Lowinski was renewed for its second season.

In August 2010 it was announced that Danni Lowinski was nominated for the Deutscher Comedypreis 2010 ("German Comedy Award 2010") alongside Pastewka and Stromberg. On 9 October 2010, Danni Lowinski won the Deutscher Fernsehpreis (German Television award) for best series.

In October 2010, it was announced that The CW is planning to develop an adaptation based on the German original. This would be the first time a TV series created in Germany is adapted for the American audience. It was to star Amanda Walsh in the lead role. However, the planned adaptation did not appear in the 2011-12 schedule.

In April 2011 Sat.1 renewed Danni Lowinski for its third season.

In March 2013, SBS 6 announced there would be a Dutch remake by the same title.