Three special stories shine in the run-up to Christmas: Charly Hübner becomes a satirical escape helper in "Der Held vom Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse", Eva Victor deals with an assault with black humour in "Sorry, Baby". Sky/Wow is honouring Mozart with the opulent series "Amadeus".

There is a cinema, away from the mainstream, in which situations are more important than stories, images more significant than words and nuances more profound than dialogue. Two films this autumn prove how well this works as satire. In "Bugonia", Yorgos Lanthimos places the fate of humanity in the hands of a conspiracy theorist. Ari Aster centres the often absurd drama of the Covid pandemic on the small town of Eddington in New Mexico. The new eight-part miniseries "The Beast in Me" with Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys on Netflix is far more darkly mysterious.

In the big screen stories, autumn is human. For example in Kelly Reichardt's crook comedy "The Mastermind", in which a young father plans an art heist in the autumnal US province. Bookseller Agathe is secretly waiting for someone to steal her heart in the romantic comedy "Jane Austen and the Chaos in My Life". Meanwhile, the crime-thriller series "The Savant" with Jessica Chastain on apple tv+ generates suspense.