The Cologne commissioners Ballauf (Klaus J. Behrendt) and Schenk (Dietmar Bär) celebrate their silver wedding in this episode, 25 years crime scene Cologne. A number of times they got stranded in a kind of hodgepodge style, but a few episodes stayed, and this one for the anniversary is a highlight. “Four Years” also shows this: You shouldn’t write off old men so quickly.
Screenwriter Wolfgang Stauch has often enriched Sunday evenings with the Cucumber Queenpolice call For example, and this time he manages a feat with director Torsten C. Fischer: to meet his own artistic standards without completely irritating parts of the audience. The time levels are intertwined, and if that’s in the announcement, it’s a warning signal: Watch out, things are going to get terribly mixed up here. But here: everything is ambitious and still very comprehensible. The 2017/18 New Year’s Eve party at the house of the Seitz couple loses its composure and form, and in the end the actor Thore Bärwald (Max Hopp) lies in the pool, which is important for the plot. But the later convict doesn’t seem to be the culprit, and four years later someone else admits, that’s the second time plane. And both levels complement each other.
A carefully observed milieu study
A big question, especially for the inspectors: should we roll up the past, or should we let the past slumber – the issue was raised in the Matthias Brandtpolice call “And forgive us our sins” years ago already brilliantly negotiated. The Cologne-based company is now also presenting a carefully observed milieu study from the lifeworld of somewhat shabby artists who continue to play their roles privately even when no theater hires them any more. Max Hopp, who is part of the regular cast of many crime novels, is the ultimate tormentor here. An extinct one who, quoting wildly, swings his way through the drunken nights. “Here the fist is clenched. That the frog slams to the ground,” growls Bärwald, self-declared “the most famous of all famous hymen piercers”. Well, this skill then becomes his undoing.
Actors play actors here, who in turn have played police officers. Says Carolin Seitz (Nina Kronjäger) to the inspectors: “I’m a specialist. I once played what they are.” So paradoxical, and yet exciting to the end. Plus the soundtrack: “Autumn Leaves” in different variations. Outstanding.
The first, Sunday, 8:15 p.m
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