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It is an artificial world in which Pouya Mirzaei lives. An artificial world, but one that looks incredibly real on TV, full of details that viewers can only guess at. Pouya is a set designer and his latest project is the comedy series "Tanken - mehr als Super", which premieres on ZDFneo on 31 July. Almost the entire series is set in a petrol station at night. Not much of a challenge for a set designer, you might think as a layman. However, a look behind the scenes reveals a microcosm that has kept a complete film team of around 35 people busy over the last few months. "There are over 40,000 individual products in our petrol station, and all of them were designed especially for the series," reveals the Hamburg native, who has been working on the concept in close coordination with Directors and production since autumn 2017.

The products, which were designed in collaboration with external graphic designers and partly based on ideas from the Script Writer and the Executive Producers, have names such as Lazy Horse (anti-energy drink), Führerscheiner Losbräu (beer) or Lola Cola. There are crisps with a salty banana or tofu-bacon flavour and a horse magazine called Deckhengst. Almost all of the food in the petrol station can actually be eaten or drunk; as a rule, existing products have simply been covered with new labels. "This way, we give the actors the opportunity to simply take something from a shelf in a scene and eat or drink it," says Executive Producer Christian Friedrichs. In the corridor between the petrol station shop and the office of the film character Georg, there are time cards, shift schedules and even a fictitious escape plan - every little detail has been thought of.

But that is of course only part of the work - because the entire petrol station had to be built on the Studio Hamburg site in around four weeks. As the series is set almost exclusively at night, the idea of filming at a real petrol station was quickly discarded for health and safety reasons. However, the colour and equipment concept that Directors Marc Schlegel developed together with Director of Photography Tom Holzhauser could be consistently implemented in the studio.

The petrol pumps in front of the studio petrol station are made of wood and can be rolled, everything is mobile so that the camera can be shot from a wide variety of angles and has enough room to manoeuvre. "The walls of the petrol station are so-called jump walls - you can simply push them out so that the camera can position itself in the hole that has been created. That way you're even closer to the actor," Mirzaei reveals. To prevent reflections in the countless windows of the petrol station, the film team uses a trick: all the windows can be tilted with a small suction cup - so that the TV viewer at home doesn't notice it, of course. In this way, the angle of incidence can be manipulated so that the film team can no longer be seen in the finished scene. The floor is painted in a deceptively realistic way, as are the numerous signs of wear and tear on the walls and pillars. Even the sliding door at the entrance to the petrol station is a dummy - it works with a cable pull that has to be operated manually. "A real sliding door would be too expensive - and if it breaks, a technician would have to come specially. This way, you can quickly repair it yourself," says the production designer. Pragmatism wins on set. When filming is over, the entire petrol station can be folded up and stored - all the walls are numbered and could be quickly rebuilt for the second season.

Work on "Tanken - mehr als Super" began around two and a half years ago with the development of the scripts. Things got serious in autumn 2017 when it became clear that ZDFneo would give the go-ahead for the first twelve episodes. "That was a great vote of confidence, because Tanken is the first comedy series that ZDFneo has initially commissioned with twelve episodes," explains Michael Lehmann, CEO of Studio Hamburg Produktion Gruppe. Pouya Mirzaei and his team then joined the project and worked closely with Unit Production Manager Monika Praefke and Line Producer Marcus Kreuz to ensure that Tanken could be realised on schedule and within budget. The trained architect drew outlines, commissioned movable walls, calculated with the available budget, searched with his team for suitable props and tried to implement the vision of a "neon palace" with a corresponding corporate design and colour palette as well as possible with the rest of the team. A petrol station in Barsbüttel, Schleswig-Holstein, was chosen as the model for the series, the picture of which even hangs in the office of the film character Georg. "We tell our story in a franchise petrol station, for which we developed a style guide - including the colour concept, logo and font. This means we also have a template when we develop new things - from wall posters to costumes. Products such as sweets or drinks also have a specific colour, so that this colour concept can be seen in every camera shot. Everything fits in," reveals Mirzaei - and you can tell that he enjoys the attention to detail in his job.