Julian Koechlin
Michi Wyss
Overview
When business consultant Michi Wyss inherits his late father's troubled farm he must confront his rural past -- and his family's future.
Seasons
- Status
- Returning Series
- Seasons
- 3 seasons
- Episodes
- 24 episodes
- First aired
- Sep 26, 2021
Cast
6 people
Reviews
2 min readThe farm as a debt collector
Going back only interests me when the past shows up like a bill. New Heights does that. Swiss German title first: Neumatt. Three seasons of Michi Wyss inheriting his late father's farm and finding that labor will not settle the account.
The land wants the man who left. It also wants to know if leaving ever finished.
Julian Koechlin's Michi spent his adult years on a city career that does not smell like manure. Then the father dies and the farm is his. Village rules sit on the same acre as a private guilt.
The series lets that sit. No hurry. The Swiss countryside in these frames looks wide enough to vanish into, and somehow there is still no cover.
Wanting to sell does not make him the villain, and trying to save it does not make him the saint. The useful part is the haggle, where a legacy is an argument you keep having. Marlise Fischer as his mother and Sophie Hutter as his sister arrive with their own math for what the land is worth.
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsSRF sold a Swiss farm drama to Netflix in 190 countries, then the English title read New Heights
When SRF announced the deal in February 2022, it called Neumatt the first Swiss series listed in 190 countries and offered in 30 languages. RTS immediately named the catch. Der Bestatter had been on Netflix since October 2015. Station Horizon followed in January 2017. What SRF actually sold was scale. Season 1 had pulled a 35.2 percent market share on SRF 1. The English title on the service is New Heights. Julian Koechlin plays Michi Wyss, a Zurich consultant who hid the farm at work and hid being gay in the village, latestnetflix.com argues, then went home after his father killed himself and left debts. 
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Petra Volpe's farmer-suicide brief, then a Zurich festival Monday.
Cineuropa, writing ahead of the Zurich Film Festival screening on 25 September 2021, said the eight 47-minute episodes were created by Marianne Wendt from an idea by Petra Volpe. Volpe had been looking at the high suicide rate among farmers and at people stuck between rural work and city escape. Sabine Boss and Pierre Monnard directed. Zodiac Pictures produced with SRF. Swiss Films logs season 1 as 8x46 minutes in Swiss-German, world premiere September 2021, then Play Suisse. SRF 1 began the daily run on 26 September. Koechlin won the Prix Swissperform. Marlise Fischer, who plays grandmother Trudi, took supporting. Susanne Wille, then SRF's culture head, said the Netflix listing showed "that Switzerland now plays a role on the international series market." , ,
The family is the engine. Rachel Braunschweig is mother Katharina. Sophie Hutter is sister Sarah, who wants a sale. Jerome Humm is brother Lorenz, who wants the cows. Anouk Petri is Angelina. Nicola Perot is Dome Boveri, the former lover already known in the village. Benito Bause is Joel Bachmann, the city boyfriend. Mannschaft noticed the pairing once Netflix put season 1 in 30 languages. The magazine argued Koechlin looks "real" rather than like a polished serial lead, and that Bause gets rougher edges than he did on ARD's All You Need, including sex scenes the German press called better than the public-broadcaster version. It also told readers to keep the original Swiss-German track. Netflix's US page still sells season 1 as eight TV-MA episodes about a consultant who inherits a troubled farm. , ,
Zodiac's English one-pager still calls him Mick, a leftover from translation. The character on screen is Michi. The farm is Neumatt. The show is a family fight with milk, debt, and a double closet, city versus village. Crew United dates the German Netflix first showing to 13 May 2022. That is the quiet international drop after the SRF victory lap. ,
Three seasons, then SRF called the last round.
Wendt stayed showrunner. Season 2 went to the Solothurn Film Festival. Season 3, billed as the last, started on SRF 1 on 13 October 2024. Eight more 45-minute hours, all of them on Play Suisse the same day. Swiss Films says Michi launches a startup, learns who his biological father is, and nearly loses the siblings chasing that investor. Cosima Frei and Bettina Oberli directed. Peter Mygind turns up as Nic Olsson, the big-money figure. Martin Vischer is business partner Oscar. Seriencamp's biography for Wendt still lists New Heights / Neumatt as three seasons for SRF and Netflix, shown at Series Mania 2021 in Forum Exclusives, with season 3 later nominated for a Swiss storytelling award. The American podcast that stole the English title is a different show. This one is a dairy farm, a gay consultant, and a public broadcaster that got Netflix to carry the manure. , ,
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.