A prime-time romantic comedy premiered Tuesday on German TV in which a workaholic German chancellor ends up falling for a dashing French leader.

All resemblances to reality have been thrown to the wind in Die Staatsaffaere (The State Affair) with the chancellor played by German blonde bombshell Veronica Ferres, while French actor Philippe Caroit, 54, is even better looking than ex-French president Jacques Chirac in his prime.

While the fizz may have gone out of Franco-German relations since Francois Hollande failed to tempt the pastor's daughter Angela Merkel from the narrow path of fiscal rectitude, the TV film on the SAT. 1 channel pushes the frisson of sex and power to the hilt.

Ferres plays Chancellor Anna Bremer as a woman married to the job, but her cool exterior melts when she starts working alongside newly-elected French president Guy Dupont.

During an EU summit, Bremer realizes that, in fact, the two leaders already know each other from a passionate encounter they had 25 years earlier the night the Berlin Wall fell.

As fast as you can say fiscal stimulus, the flame is re-ignited. Passions however have been less enflamed among critics.