# Holiday Secrets (2019)

> A Christmas reunion pulls one German family back into the secrets of its past across three intimate episodes.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/80597

## Facts

- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 3
- Episode runtime: 34 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: drama
- Created by: Katharina Eyssen
- Network: Netflix
- Cast: Corinna Harfouch, Christiane Paul, Svenja Jung, Leonie Benesch, Hans-Uwe Bauer, Golo Euler, Thilo Prothmann, Tilda Jenkins
- TMDB rating: 6.5/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11243536/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: moderate
- Complexity: accessible
- Violence: none
- Tone: melancholic, intimate, restrained, wistful, tense

## What critics say

Audiences gave the miniseries a mixed reception, with its family drama appreciated but its reunion-driven story viewed as uneven.

## Synopsis

Holiday Secrets (2019) is a German family drama miniseries created by Katharina Eyssen and released on Netflix. Across three roughly 34-minute episodes, it follows a family whose Christmas reunion becomes a gateway into its own history. Corinna Harfouch and Christiane Paul anchor the ensemble, supported by Svenja Jung, Leonie Benesch, Hans-Uwe Bauer and Golo Euler, with Thilo Prothmann as Walter and Tilda Jenkins as the younger Lara carrying the earlier timeline. The engine of the story is the slow excavation of old decisions and unspoken resentments as relatives gather around a holiday table and the past keeps intruding. Each episode peels back another layer, moving between the present festive gathering and the memories that explain it. The tone is restrained, melancholic and intimate, closer to a quiet chamber piece than a melodrama, with an emphasis on glances, silences and the weight of inherited guilt. Fans of This Is Us and The Affair will find resonance in its multigenerational emotional core and its patient unpicking of a family's private history. Because it runs only three episodes, it works as a single sitting of tightly observed domestic drama.

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