Naman Shrestha
The collaborative creation of Philipp Käßbohrer and Matthias Murmann, Netflix’s ‘How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast),’ is a German coming-of-age comedy series that centers upon a high school nerd named Mortiz Zimmerman, who looks for ways to impress his ex-girlfriend and win back her love. In order to do so, he finds himself entering the world of narcotics along with his best friend, Lenny Sander, who helps him set up an online ecstasy business in his bedroom. What starts off as a small business unexpectedly turns into something much bigger than either of them had imagined.
All of a sudden, Mortiz and Lenny’s small-time business booms, and they end up becoming Europe’s biggest drug dealers. Led by stellar performances from a talented ensemble cast comprising Maximilian Mundt, Lena Klenke, Danilo Kamperidis, Damian Hardung, Luna Baptiste Schaller, Leonie Wesselow, and Bjarne Mädel, the crime show unfolds in a fictional German town of Rinseln. Despite being a fictitious setting, it manages to introduce a hint of authenticity to the narrative since it resembles several other small towns across the country.
How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast) Filming Locations
‘How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast)’ is filmed across different parts of Germany, primarily in Bonn and Cologne. Under the working title ‘Don’t Try This at Home,’ the production of the inaugural iteration reportedly wrapped up in December 2018. Shooting for the sophomore round commenced around September 2019. As for the filming of the third season, it got underway in July 2020 and concluded in December of the same year. After a long hiatus, the cast and crew returned to the set to shoot the fourth and final season around the summer of 2024.
Bonn, Germany
Many pivotal sequences for ‘How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast)’ were lensed in the federal city of Bonn, situated on the banks of the Rhine. Various parts of the city, including the area around Ippendorf, served as an important filming site. In order to shoot the exteriors of the characters’ residences, the filming unit set up camp in Spreestraße. As for the scenes involving the Rinseln high school, some of them were reportedly taped in a former educational facility of the Federal Foreign Office in Gudenauer Weg.
Cologne, Germany
For shooting purposes, the production team of ‘How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast)’ also traveled to Cologne, the largest city in Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia. Several school scenes in the Netflix show were recorded in the Georg-Büchner-Gymnasium at Ostlandstraße 39 in Cologne. Given the vastness of the school campus, the filming unit utilized the space by building additional sets in empty school rooms. For instance, even the interior of Moritz’s room was built in the school. A few additional portions for the fourth and final season of the crime comedy series were also lensed in The Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) Cologne 2024, which was held in the Lanxess Arena Willy-Brandt-Platz 3, in August 2024.
In an interview with Mashable, Maximilian Mundt talked about a funny moment he experienced on the set of season 2. He explained, “One funny thing was that we were filming in winter and the whole studio Moritz and Lenny’s home is built into an old abandoned school so there’s no electricity or water in the school and they put all the sets in there and we were filming in the winter. It was freaking cold and we just had a little toilet outside and it was frozen, the water in the toilet was frozen so nobody could enter it because we couldn’t flush the toilet. We were just waiting all day for the ice in the toilet to melt. Hahaha. So you imagine you’re working for Netflix and everything is expensive and big and then you enter the toilet and you’re like *mock cries* what is this?”
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