As of: May 10, 2024 6:00 a.m
“Save Me”, the novel by the Hamburg bestselling author Mona Kasten, has been made into a film: Yesterday the six episodes of the series “Maxton Hall” about Ruby Bell and James Beaufort started on Amazon Prime with Damian Hardung and Harriet Herbig-Matten, in part filmed in Lower Saxony.
The novel trilogy “Save Me”, “Save You” and “Save Us” is one of the great German-language fiction successes of the last decade. Wherever the Hamburg author Mona Kasten appears, reads and signs books, the queue of fans is long. At the Frankfurt Book Fair this year there will probably even be an entire hall dedicated to the Young-Adult and New-Adult categories.
Filmed partly at Marienburg Castle in Lower Saxony
No wonder that the streaming service Amazon Prime Video has secured the rights to film the first season of “Maxton Hall”. However, most of the look of England was not shot in Great Britain – but in Germany. For example, on 23 of a total of 60 days of filming in the neo-Gothic Marienburg Castle in Pattensen near Hanover, the former summer residence of King George V of Hanover. Some scenes were filmed in Oxford. The series is now available to binge-watch in more than 240 countries and territories, targeting teenagers and young adults.
That’s what “Maxton Hall” is about: elite boarding school in England as a precursor to Oxford
At the premiere of “Maxton Hall” in Berlin it quickly became clear: the audience was very satisfied with the casting of the series.
It shows how the young Ruby Bell (played by Harriet Herbin-Matten, known from “Bibi & Tina – the film”) copes at the elite boarding school in England, Maxton Hall, in order to finally fulfill her life’s dream: at university To be able to study at Oxford. The ambitious 17-year-old wants to remain virtually invisible among her classmates and stubbornly push through her program so that she can receive a recommendation from one of her teachers at Maxton Hall. She needs this in addition to the fabulous grades for her application to Oxford University. In the first episode, Ruby explains:
“Maxton Hall College is not just a school. It is a the Schools. Anyone who has studied there has the world open to them. Families like the Beauforts have had more money and power than many royal families for generations. And I am invisible to them.” Dialogue from the series “Maxton Hall”
The first meeting between Ruby and James is explosive.
But just before the home stretch and before her 18th birthday, Ruby witnesses an incident in a teacher’s office that she shouldn’t have seen. Shortly afterwards, her “invisibility” is over. Because the next day, the star of the school’s lacrosse team, James Beaufort, played by Damian Hardung, known from “Club of the Red Ribbons” and “How to sell drugs online (fast)”, comes into her life and won’t let him go anymore shake off.
James is the attractive son of a fashion empire, the offspring of a millionaire, everything falls to him. Ruby hates him: “James Beaufort embodies everything that is wrong with the world of the rich. Excessive privilege, arrogance and ignorance.”
– What you saw in Sutton’s office never happened. (James)
– You’re an even bigger jerk than I thought! (Ruby)
The fact that Ruby’s silence cannot be bought irritates the student, who is not used to resistance. Because he goes overboard at the next school event, the school principal transfers him away from the lacrosse team and to the event committee, which Ruby chairs. A game of cat and mouse begins. Here, the novel and series follow the motto, “what teases each other, loves each other.”
Justus Riesner plays Alistair Ellington, James’ best friend.
A North German plays in the series: Justus Riesner comes from Henstedt-Ulzburg and went to school in the same small town as author Mona Kasten. He plays Alistair Ellington, another athlete on Maxton Hall’s lacrosse team – and James Beaufort’s best friend.
The series is full of original filming locations – the English setting is at least unusual for the German audience – and interesting story lines of the supporting characters. Above all, as the magazine “Entertainment Weekly” points out in the online edition, the two main actors have “an appealing and genuine chemistry. Herbig-Matten gives Ruby a likeable sharpness, while Hardung suggests a sadness behind the piercing gaze with which he deals dreamed of a life beyond the reach of paternal control.”
Mona Kasten on the New Adult genre: “Stories are realistic and heartbreaking”
The Hamburg author Mona Kasten herself only gives a few interviews. In an interview with “Büchermenschen.de” in 2018, she said about the “New Adult” genre that she liked it primarily for these reasons: The characters are at an age where you are growing up – or at least trying to. “They struggle with the problems that almost everyone between the ages of 15 and 30 struggles with. The stories are realistic and heartbreaking. That’s exactly what has fascinated me about the genre for years.”
Further information
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N-JOY | The N-JOY Morning Show | 09.05.2024 | 6:00 a.m