Dudes Review
Director: Tobi Baumann and Jan Martin Scharf
Date Created: 2025-10-02 22:37
1.5
Dudes Review: Alphamännchen is a German Netflix series consisting of eight episodes. Directed by Tobi Baumann and Jan Martin Scharf with Tom Beck, Moritz Führmann, David Rott, and Serkan Kaya starring in main roles as middle-aged men facing relationship, work, and masculinity issues. The series is actually adapted from the Spanish show Alpha Males (Machos Alfa), which has already run for three seasons, and this German one does not inherit that magic. It soon becomes a humourless, stale experience on brittle egos and toxic male attitudes.
Dudes Review
The German series Dudes tracks four friends, each in the throes of a midlife crisis, who are compelled to rethink their definition of what it means to be a man in the modern world. It ought to be some sort of clever commentary on contemporary masculinity that instead proves to be an albatross that’s predictable as well as draining. Going in, having only anticipated some humour or some quality writing, I was consistently disappointed by the show.
The four leading actors supposedly portray various “types” of men. Tom Beck’s Ulf is one such so-called alpha male who’s got an influencer wife but can’t tolerate a powerful woman in the office. Moritz Führmann’s Andi is exhausted, insecure, and stuck in a marriage that lacks love. Erik, played by David Rott, is a player who wants to stabilise but keeps finding himself entangled with notions of open relationships. Cem, played by Serkan Kaya, is the intelligent one, but a total failure when it comes to sincerity and commitment.
These character sketches could create good comedy; however, the show far from transcends cliché. The men here are boiled down to some isolated aberrant flaw, and the plot simply reiterates ad nauseam the same issues rather than layering more upon more. I had essentially seen every bit of what was being dished out by the third episode.
One of the largest issues Netflix’s Dudes has is that it just doesn’t make me laugh. The comedy is based on cringeworthy sex jokes, absurd situations, and slapstick that isn’t new. The scenes built as a stinker or shocker, gunky dinner parties, lost engagement rings, or humiliating moments in bed, hinge. I caught myself winching or sitting back and waiting for the scene to end instead of laughing.
The problem is that so much of what constitutes humour here feels outdated. Rather than sharp social commentaries on toxic masculinity, we get presented with lazy stereotypes instead. It goes so far in trying to demonstrate just how ridiculous the male ego can be, but fails to do so in so unexceptional a manner that the message which is being conveyed ends up losing its edge.
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As a German adaptation of an Alpha Males program that had been based on a Spanish series, I just had the feeling that something was lost in translation. It was popular enough to have existed for a few seasons in Spain, but this version in Germany is a poor cover. It’s forced timing with clunky scene transitions, and its narrative has no sense of organically unfolding in a natural way.
Even aesthetically, the show is lacklustre. The style boasts a point-and-shoot feel with little imagination. It is not stylish either, considering that this is a comedy series that promises brashness as well as raunchiness. The entire show comes across as Netflix having produced it as a bare minimum in their catalogue rather than a bid to portray an actual narrative.
Talking about the female protagonists of Dudes Series, Elif, Kim, Silke, and Vanessa are satellites to the men’s problems. They’re occasionally roadblocks, occasionally foils to comedy, but hardly ever as fully developed characters who have their own narratives. It’s a show that doesn’t depict modern gender roles so much as invite some eye-rolling stereotypes that do more damage than good to a show that attempts to show men as fully realised human beings. Instead of providing fascinating interactions between women and men, the show falls into the same old insecure men/women-too-patient-or-demanding comedy ad infinitum.
Personally, I had trouble completing Dudes. By the midpoint, I was already speculating how each subplot was going to conclude. I was not surprised at anything, and I was not laughing. A quality comedy, even one that is overblown, must make the viewer identify or at least laugh at the silliness. In this, I felt I was not part of the characters and was bored with their constant error.”.
The only positive thing I can say is that the actors tried their best. Tom Beck, Moritz Führmann, David Rott, and Serkan Kaya are decent actors, but nothing could be done to save a script as poor as this one. Sometimes I was even feeling sorry for them because the dialogues were so boring, as well as the situations so predictable.
Netflix Dudes Review: Summing Up
Overall, this series can be described in one sentence: a missed opportunity. The German show had the potential to satirise male sensitivity and contemporary relationships in a light-hearted, entertaining manner, but instead chose to go for a boring retread of cliches. The jokes are stale, the characters don’t breathe, and the writing doesn’t manage to lift itself above the level of being mediocre for a single episode. I just couldn’t get into this show on any level. Placing it alongside other foreign programs that make fun of gender stereotypes, Dudes is the weakest link in the chain.
