TORONTO -- A new set of advertisements from the German government is praising an unexpected hero of the COVID-19 pandemic: the couch potato.

The ad series, titled 'Together against Corona #SpecialHeroes,' was released on Saturday, 12 days after Germany went into an emergency month-long lockdown to help stop the spread of the coronavirus.

The first 90-second video starts with an elderly man recalling his "service" to the nation in the winter of 2020, "when the whole country's eyes were on us."

"I had just turned 22 and was studying engineering when the second wave hit," Anton Lehmann said during an interview supposedly occurring at some point in the future.

"At this age, you want to party, study, get to know people, go for drinks with friends…Yet fate had different plans for us," he said.

Despite the satirical tone of the video, sombre violin chords play in the background as the setting changes to the winter of 2020. The old man is once again young, mindlessly eating potato chips and slurping soda while he lies on the couch watching TV.

"Suddenly the fate of this country lay in our hands," Lehmann said. "So we mustered all our courage and did what was expected of us, the only right thing. We did nothing. Absolutely nothing. Being as lazy as raccoons."

Attempting to break his stupor, the young Lehmann tries to find a more comfortable couch position, including perching himself on the frame and lyng upside down. The music switches to a more sweepingly epic tone as Lehmann remains on the couch.

"Day and night we kept our arses at home and fought the spread of the virus," he continued. "Our couch was the frontline and our patience was our weapon. This is how we became heroes, back then, during that corona winter of 2020."

The advertisement ends with a government message that says "you too can become a hero by staying at home."

As of Sunday morning, the video has been viewed more than 120,000 times on YouTube

The German government also released a second ad to continue the storyline from the perspective of Luise Lehmann, Anton's future wife.

She explained how the two has just met in 2020 and were excited about their future together. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

"The whole country put their hopes in us young people. So we plucked up all our courage and did nothing," Luise Lehmann said as the video shows the pair lying in bed while eating a bucket of fried chicken.

"We lazed around in bed, met as few people as possible, and with that stopped the spread of COVID-19," she added, calling themselves "special heroes."

Self-proclaimed couch potatoes took to social media to share positive responses to the new ads with many calling them "brilliant."

"What did you do in the War daddy?" one Twitter user wrote. "I stayed home and saved millions of lives."

Another tweeted that the ads were "patriotic, moving, and light hearted, but with a hard message."

"If parking you're [sic] a** on the couch all winter is being a hero then give me that medal!" joked another.

Germany imposed new restrictions to curb the spread of the virus at the start of November, shuttering restaurants, bars and gyms, and setting limits on the number of people who can meet in public and private settings.

Germany has recorded nearly 800,000 COVID-19 cases and more than 12,500 deaths since the start of the pandemic, according to a global tally kept by Johns Hopkins University.