A young man is murdered, a friend has a bloody sweater, a friend is strangely taciturn. Anyway, the boys are silent in this one crime scene mostly, the old people talk all the more. The so-called Generation Z, what to think of them? Who drives e-scooters, stares at her cell phone and wants to have a lot of free time. Then a red wine from large glasses, the vegetable quiche is in the oven, we are in the left-wing bourgeoisie of Freiburg, not in the Black Forest in the countryside with its cranky staff.
“We know our children,” the parents call out when Inspector Tobler (Eva Löbau) and Inspector Berg (Hans-Jochen Wagner) investigate the area surrounding the dead Chris. But they don’t know anything. While their children make life-threatening challenges to gain followers on YouTube with videos of the dares, or supplement their pocket money as drug couriers, parents and relatives think that they are going to university or doing an apprenticeship. At some point a mother says: “What do we know about our children? Maybe it’s good not to know everything.”
“Only we grass dachshunds keep trying with honest work,” Berg complains about the boys
A “small family emergency”, as Tobler calls it, is intended to give the subject personal depth. Her niece can no longer cope at home and moves in with her “cool aunt”, who becomes uncool when she finds out what Vanessa is up to. The fact that there is a big gap between the generations can be understood even without the constructed story from the private life of the commissioner. For everyone else, there are split screens in this solid crime thriller by Astrid Ströher (script) and Kai Wessel (director). Adult life is shown on one half of the screen and young people on the other. That there’s a body doesn’t matter much.
The perspective is that of the elderly, the view of the young is often pejorative. “Only we grass dachshunds keep trying with honest work,” Berg complains about the boys who want to get rich with cryptocurrencies. He offers Tobler, her niece, who wants to become an influencer, to “pull the classic ears”. Everything in the best parenting order with the investigators, while the real parents are for laissez-faire.
What is irritating is that Caroline’s cousin in this crime scene the student Zoé plays and in last week’s from Kiel the vocational student Celina. She was furious, in Freiburg Zoé is above all despondent. Mobile phones play a role for both, the perfect world for neither. There isn’t. The inspectors know that, the parents have to learn it the hard way.
The first, Sunday, 8:15 p.m.
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