European press and commentators switched on the TV, pulled out the popcorn and sat back to watch the latest preposterous episode in Britain’s Brexit psychodrama with a mixture of disbelief and resignation.

“Most series start getting dull after a second or third season, but Brexit’s different,” said Germany’s Die Zeit. “The longer it lasts, the better the plot gets. Yesterday’s twist was the best yet: first the unloved PM offers to go, then MPs seize the initiative and it seems the tide may be turning.

“But wait … In the end, it turns out they can agree on – absolutely nothing. So, cue uproar in the house, and the credits start running. ‘Order,’ roars John Bercow. Please do not adjust your set: we’ll be back right after the break.”

After a day in which Theresa May offered to step down as prime minister if MPs backed her twice-rejected Brexit deal, and parliament failed dismally to agree on any one of eight possible ways forward, the paper’s incredulous front page headline was: “All against all, and all against everything.”

Anyone blaming Britain’s present impasse on May had been proved wrong, the paper said: “Parliament is no smarter than the prime minister: lesson one. Lesson two, the crisis unfolding in Britain goes beyond Brexit. It has engulfed the political institutions and shaken the whole conventional order.”

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wondered despairingly whether “this moment of madness” might soon be behind us, “so that for all those involved, on both sides of the Channel, we can get back to talking about other important things”.

Following “yet another chaotic day in parliament”, it did at least look like “the last chance for May’s Brexit deal” was approaching, the paper said. The prime minister had “played her last card” in offering to resign in exchange for the Conservative votes she needed to get it through the House of Commons.

But the Democratic Unionist party did not seem to be playing ball, and “even for the alternatives, there is no majority in parliament. Meanwhile, May’s potential successors are champing at the bit. And business is growing seriously alarmed.”

Thus, Britain’s Brexit impasse “has never looked more insurmountable than after this crazy day of 27 March – the day that was supposed to unblock the situation”, said France’s Le Monde. Even May’s “desperate promise” to leave if MPs ratified the withdrawal agreement “does not look likely to extract Britain from its current mess”.

The DUP’s determination to vote against May’s deal meant that “in the manner of a Shakespearian tragedy, the heroine of Brexit may indeed have sacrificed herself – but, stabbed in the back by her allies, it may all be in vain … And the sacred cause she defended is now compromised.”

Day after day, “Brexit demands of us an ever more implausible feat of mental gymnastics”, complained France’s Libération. “In taking back a small measure of control over Brexit on Wednesday, parliament was supposed to unblock the logjam. But nothing now appears less certain.”

It was “another day rich in plot twists, but without a proper ending”, the paper said. The British parliament “still does not know what it wants. On the other hand, it knows what it doesn’t want: neither the exit deal agreed with the EU, nor eight other possible ways out of this mess.”

In the Netherlands, de Volkskrant also reckoned the prime minister had “sacrificed herself for ‘her’ Brexit, but is far from sure to get parliament to vote for it”. May “has now tried everything to sell her deal”, the paper said, “from handing out knighthoods to opponents to promising money to MPs from leave-voting constituencies”.

The Irish Times said May’s deal was “still short of a majority despite her offer to step down”, while El País in Spain thought that even if the prime minister had “finally understood that she was the price that must be paid to save Brexit”, there remained “a great many obstacles on her way to securing it … This is not over yet.”