Switch! and its successor, Switch Reloaded are German comedy shows, which parody other TV shows (and occasionally, movies) from Germany, the United States and sometimes other nations. The sketches are pretty short - just like what you'd get if you switch the channel all the time.
Unrelated to the American Crime and Punishment Series with Eddie Albert and Robert Wagner.
Some of the shows parodied by Switch!:
- Columbo
- ER
- Flipper
- The German version of Jeopardy!
- Quincy, M.E.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation
- The Waltons
- The Winnetou films
- The X-Files
Some of the shows parodied by Switch Reloaded:
- Bones
- CSI: Miami
- Dr. House
- Lasko – Die Faust Gottes
- Let's Dance (German version of Strictly Come Dancing)
- The German version of Solitary.
- The German version of Supernanny
- Das Supertalent (German version of America's Got Talent)
- Germany's Next Top Model
- Stromberg
- Two and a Half Men
- Valkyrie
- Wer wird Millionär? (German version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?)
Tropes:
- Adults Dressed as Children:
- Hoecker and Nadolny, regularly.
- Everyone in the SK-Babies parody (think Scrubs but with special unit policemen)
- The Alleged Car: The successor model of the VW Golf Pink Floyd, the VW Golf Genesis, and the VW Golf Bon Jovi: The VW (sorry, that should be WV) Bata Illic
! - Appeal to Force: In a parody of a memetic German ad.Large Ham: "Wait a bit!" (presents three glamourous photos) "My house! My car! My wife!"
Other guy (presents three not so glamourous photos): "My house! My car! My wife! Oh yeah... and that's my gun! And with that, I take your house, your car, and your wife!" - Argentina Is Nazi-Land: The Goodbye Großdeutschland sketches, a Spin-Off of the Obersalzberg sketches, and at the same time a parody of Goodbye Deutschland! Die Auswanderer, a Docu Soap about German emigrants.
- As Himself: Hoecker does this when they are spoofing Genial daneben, a Celebrity Panel Game in which he belongs to the regular cast.
- Ax-Crazy: Mona Sharma as Natalie Imbruglia.
- Bestiality Is Depraved: They have to guess the word "zoo" on Hot Streak, so the first player starts with "you like animals, don't you?", and the second player suspiciously counters, "What do you mean by that?", and it ends with, "But that happened just one time!"
- Blah, Blah, Blah: Some of the Lindenstrasse spoofs have this as the entire dialog.
- Calvin Ball: Langeoog-Lochen and other games suggested by Hoecker are this.
- Camp Gay: The prisoners in "Hinter Gitterchen - der Männerknast" (behind little bars - the men's prison).
- Catchphrase: Several.
- Cluster F-Bomb:
- Kommissar Schimanski ups the real deal to eleven.
- The punk girl in the Dingsda parody.
- Comically Missing the Point: Camp Gay fashion designer Rudolph Mooshammer, when seeing a picture of a starving naked African kid, is shocked about the kid lacking fashionable clothes.
- Crossover: What about the Terminator meets Louis de Funès?
- The Danza: "Alle und wir" has Tim as Tim, Tom as Tom, Lola as Lola and so on.
- Department of Redundancy Department: "Hier ist Deutsche Welle Polen, mit Übertragung in Farbe! Und bunt!" (Untranslatable - "in Farbe" and "bunt" both mean "in color".)
- Depraved Bisexual: In their Nena parody. She finds five love letters in his jacket - two by Ines, three by Klaus. Defenestration of his stuff follows.
- Detective Animal: Exaggerated in their Inspector Rex parody with "Polizeiobst Melanie" - Melanie being a melon!
- The Ditz/Dumb Blonde: Many female moderators, especially if played by Susanne Pätzold.
- Election Day Episode: Parodied, of course. The guy responsible for the pie diagrams decides to give all parties different colors than they have IRL which he finds more aesthetic, also doesn't care for their actual percentages in favor of more pleasing sizes, and even leaves out one big party completely.
- Evil Gloating: In their Xena: Warrior Princess parody. The villain has captured Gabrielle, then talks a lot about how he's going to kill her, immediately, right now... giving Xena enough time to arrive and save the day. Which genuinely surprises the villain.
- Felony Misdemeanor: Hanni of the young Christians calling Manni a "dummyhead".
- Foreign Remake: Of Fast Forward. Well, a loose adaptation.
- The Fundamentalist: Parodied with the "young Christians".
- German Humor
- Granola Girl: When she was still together with Robin, Lale was a hippie who liked to meet with her other hippie friends, making music with a didgeridoo and baoding balls... Robin wasn't into it.
- Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Lassie is treated like a human child, while Timmy is treated like a dog.
- Historical In-Joke: Fidel Castro had Che Guevara killed because he (Fidel) couldn't pronounce his (Che's) name, after drinking so much rum and smoking so many cigars.
- Hurricane of Puns: In the Lindenstraße (weekly soap) parody, a few Gossipy Hens decide to make fun of the Chinese guy Gung, since many German words end in -gung.
- Ikea Erotica: Again, Deutsche Welle Polen once.
- The Ingenue: The young Christians.
- Kent Brockman News: The parodies of Heute, the News Broadcast from the channel ZDF. And after the real Heute did introduce a virtual studio, Switch! gleefully incorporated it into its spoofs.
- Merchandise-Driven: In-story, the Spice Girls. "Kauf doch unsern Scheiß!" (Buy our shit!) They even sell their own wheelchair.
- Mundane Made Awesome: Nelly van Sale and Mister Snoot, parodying various sales channels.
- Also, a candidate in Wetten Dass (very popular German show where people bet that they can achieve something awesome, like recognizing the color of crayons by taste) bets that he can take ten glasses and put them, in just ten minutes, NEXT to each other - with his four helpers!
- No Swastikas: Quite remarkably for a German show, this is subverted to Refuge in Audacity levels in Obersalzberg (a parody of Stromberg, the German version of The Office). Here, none other than Adolf Hitler is the Expy for the Stromberg/Brent-character. And swastikas are everywhere in plain sight: On the wall papers, on coffee mugs, as patterns on clothes...
- Paper-Thin Disguise: The comedians play the game "Who am I?" (where you put a sticky note with the name of a famous person on your forehead). One of them (a bald guy!) guesses correctly that he's supermodel Claudia Schiffer and says it out loud. Then, suddenly fans of Claudia ask for his autograph, and a photographer pays him to shoot a topless photo. Until the sticky note falls off...
- Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Friedrich Nietzsche stating his famous "God is dead" (sorry, I meant: "God! Is! DEAD!!!"). Parodies an infamous German telephone sex ad with a dominatrix saying (rather
narmy): "Ruf! <whips> Mich! <whips> AN!!! <whips>" - "Call me now!") - Punny Name: Bülbül Hekmek.
- Questionable Casting: A deliberate example is Hoecker, whose height is 159 cm, playing Thomas Gottschalk, a famous show host who in Real Life is 193 cm tall.
- Qurac: Lampukistan.
- Recycled In Medieval Times: Last episode of first season. Complete with Burn the Witch! ("Sorry, I had to practice") and Das althe verhacksthückthe Teutsch.
- Running Gag: "Hoecker, you're out!" - "But why?", which is "Hoecker, sie sind raus!" - "Ja, wieso das denn?" in German.
- Ruritania: Deutsche Welle Polen shows how Westerners would imagine a stereotypical TV show from a former Warsaw Pact country (like Poland in this case).
- Sassy Turkish Woman: Bülbül Hekmek of TRT Früstük.
- Speech Impediment: Martina Hill as RTL Punkt 12 anchorwoman Katja Burkard, or while telling hilarious nonsense about the stock market as Anja Kohl.
- Spell My Name With An S: Bernhard Hoëcker, to show that his name is pronounced Ho-ecker, not Höcker, since in German, usually oe = ö.
- The Stoic: Heidi Pršblybzçka, anchorwoman of Deutsche Welle Polen.
- Stylistic Suck: Deutsche Welle Polen.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: After Mona Sharma left the show, her characters Nelly van Sale and Hanni were replaced by Kelly van Sale and Fanni.
- Teen Pregnancy: Exaggerated: Dennis aus Huerth is 20, and his grandmother is in her late 30s.
- Telepathy: Used by the team "telepathy sisters" on their parody of Hot Streak. Of course, they don't really have trouble to win.
- Teleporter Accident: In a news report about low-cost beaming (as a parody of low-cost flying). We meet a woman who literally lost her tongue, her husband who's reduced to a head, and another woman who gained a second nose on her arm. Which she got from another TV moderator, as we see later.
- That Makes Me Feel Angry: Heidi regularly informs us how she feels (excited, frex). From looking at her face, you could never tell..
- Theme Naming: The young Christians are named Hanni, Nanni and Manni. Alle und wir also uses this.
- Those Wacky Nazis: Obersalzberg (see No Swastikas)
- Timmy in a Well: In the Lassie parody, natch. It turned out he fell down a <something that rhymes with well> and broke his <something that rhymes with leg>.
- Translation with an Agenda: Viva's Voiceover Translation plays up Elton John's homosexuality.
- True Art: Parodied with a "theme evening" of German-French TV station arte. The theme? "The dung heap".
- Unexplained Recovery: Mona Sharma was burned in the medieval version of "Facts, facts, facts", but returned in later seasons.
- The Unintelligible:
- German singer Herbert Grönemeyer (somewhat Truth in Television). And his mother too.
- Hoecker appeared as a candidate wearing a funny nose on Jeopardy! Essentially, you could only understand the vowels of his speech. This went on for a while, then the showmaster asked him to take off the fake nose. Which he did. And then you saw (er, heard) that he always talked like that.
- Visual Pun:Narrator: And now... Winnetou II!
[A second Winnetou appears.]
Winnetou II: Have you seen Winnetou III?
Winnetou I and Old Shatterhand: No... - Wildlife Commentary Spoof: In one case, the "animals" in question are landmines!
