Stream It Or Skip It?

It’s getting to the point where, when we go to make our list of reviews for a particular month, we can spot a new remake of the 2022 Spanish series Alpha Males right away. A new remake from Germany takes the “four dudes struggling with being pigs in the 2020s” and… well, they do mostly the same as the other versions, albeit a bit more slowly.

DUDES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Four men are interviewed at a class that at first feels like it’s from a 12-step program, and they all talk about how hard it is to be a man in the 2020s. At least two of them seem to be willing to learn.

The Gist: The four friends — Ulf (Tom Beck), Erick (David Rott), Andi (Moritz Führmann) and Cem (Serkan Kaya)— are at a seminar about toxic masculinity, and they’re all there reluctantly (though Cem takes notes).

Some time earlier, Ulf wakes up confident that his boss at the magazine publishing company where he works is going to promote him to CEO. He’s shocked to find out that the CEO isn’t just staying, but is bringing in a younger woman to be his boss, which prompts him to quit. He doesn’t tell his wife Elif (Mona Pirzad), who is looking to become an influencer, that he quit. When he realizes he’s too old or too male to get another job, he panics, as his family just moved into their gigantic modern home.

Cem, a therapist, is interrupted at work by his 16-year-old daughter Alina (Valentina Leone). They find out that Alina has decided to move in with Cem permanently, leaving his ex-wife furious. Alina then proceeds to set her single dad up on Tinder, telling him he needs to have sex with ten women in order to move on.

Erick, a restauranteur, tells his married sex buddy that he’s finally going to ask his girlfriend Kim (Marleen Lohse) to marry him. He has the ring hidden in some tiramisu, but ends up swallowing it (literally) when she proposes they have an open relationship, a result of all the pain she’s seen as a divorce attorney. On the other end of the spectrum, police officer Andi’s wife Silke (Franziska Machens) is completely unsatisfied with his lack of sex drive and when Andi tries to bring toys into the bedroom, it doesn’t go well.

All of the men’s issues with the women in their lives come to a head during a dinner party at Ulf’s house, where the friends find out that Ulf quit his job.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Dudes (original title: Alphamännchen) is a German remake of the 2022 Spanish comedy Alpha Males, as is the French comedy Shafted, the Dutch comedy Roosters and the Italian comedy Real Men.

Our Take: It’s almost become comical at this point how many times Alpha Males has been remade over the last three years (and, like before, we copy/pasted the Gist section and tweaked it to show how similar the various first episodes are to each other). We get it; middle-aged men trying to figure out their place in the world feels like a universal theme, and the writers who have adapted Alpha Males in various parts of Europe have a freedom to make their characters piggish chauvinists that writers here in the States really don’t have, outside sitcoms with Tim Allen or Shane Gillis in them.

The Dudes premiere more or less has the same story beats as the other four shows do, though Cem doesn’t have his Tinder date come to the out-of-control dinner party and Ulf at least goes back to his office to get his job back before deciding he’d rather not be “ball-less.” It’s a bit more deliberate and less raunchy than some of the other versions, though the vibrating butt plug gags are still there (see the other reviews if you have no idea what we’re talking about).

Another thing that makes Dudes a bit different from its cousin series is that UIf and Erick, who represent the most piggish of the four friends in all of the versions, are slightly less so here. The reasons why Ulf gets angry at having a woman lead his team is less because of her gender and more because he gave 23 years to the company. He does cite that the magazines he leads are about men’s fitness, but the new leader’s kickboxing background takes care of that. Erick seems to be completely done with cheating on Kim, but we’ll see what direction he goes in now that she wants things to be open.

Sex and Skin: Did we mention the butt plug vibrator scenes? It’s especially funny when Andi and Sikle have to talk to their son’s teacher after he finds the vibrator and brings it to school.

Parting Shot: Cem meets his date, but in a restaurant, not during his friends’ crazy dinner party.

Sleeper Star: Among the women in the cast, Franziska Machens has the most comedic material as Silke, who gets super drunk at the dinner party and tries to get Andi to have a quickie in Ulf and Elif’s bedroom.

Most Pilot-y Line: Erick poops out the ring he swallowed and the only thing he cleans it off with is water. Ugh. Don’t they have Clorox wipes in Germany?

Our Call: STREAM IT. Why not, right? Dudes may be the same as Alpha Males and all of its remakes, but there are still funny moments, and it’ll be surprising if you’ve never seen the other versions before.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.