About Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten
Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten (English: Good Times, Bad Times), almost universally shortened to GZSZ, is Germany's longest-running daily soap opera, broadcast on RTL every weekday evening since 11 May 1992. Loosely adapted from the Australian series The Restless Years, the show follows an ever-evolving circle of friends, families, and rivals living in and around the Kolle-Kiez, a fictional Berlin neighbourhood. Across thousands of episodes it has charted first loves, bitter feuds, weddings, betrayals, and reinventions, becoming a fixture of German prime-access television and a launchpad for countless young actors and pop acts.
The heart of the series is the everyday drama of ordinary Berliners whose lives keep colliding. Friendships are forged and tested in the neighbourhood's shared flats, bars, and businesses, while romance and ambition pull characters together and tear them apart. Towering over it all is lawyer Jo Gerner, played since 1993 by Wolfgang Bahro, the cunning, morally flexible patriarch whose schemes have driven decades of plotlines and made him one of German television's most recognisable characters. Around him orbit longtime mainstays such as chef Leon Moreno (Daniel Fehlow) and sharp-witted businesswoman Katrin Flemming (Ulrike Frank), whose entangled histories give the show its sense of continuity.
What has kept GZSZ on the air for more than three decades is its blend of grounded, relatable storytelling and the steady churn of fresh faces and topical storylines. The soap leans into contemporary German life, weaving in social issues alongside the love triangles, family secrets, and business rivalries that define the genre. Filmed largely at the Studio Babelsberg complex near Berlin, with location shoots that anchor it firmly in the capital, the series has become a cultural touchstone watched by generations of German households and a reliable star-making machine for the country's entertainment industry.
