What better way to celebrate Christmas Eve than with the true story of a frustrated Berlin artist who went on an inventive crime spree and became a German folk hero? More “McDuck” more than Dickens, but it’s still perfect fare for any time of year!

Based on a string of mall bombings in Germany in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I Am Scrooge (Beta Film) tells the story of Arno Funke (Friedrich Mücke, Tatort), a sign painter by trade who used his talent for gadgets to build bombs in his kitchen, detonating them overnight at high-end department stories as leverage for extortion. The cat-and-mouse drama is positively thrilling as our anti-hero (using the alias “Scrooge McDuck”) evades the police again and again and again and again and again – and you, too, might perhaps find yourself rooting for the eccentric inventor who was also known as “the DuckTales Bandit”. Heck, he was so famous he’s even referenced in a then-contemporary episode of Tatort: Schimanski – also streaming on MHz Choice! Man, man, man…

Now in his 70s, the reformed extortionist has, in the years since his release, become a bestselling author and reality TV star. Who says (bloodless) crime doesn’t pay?