“Crime Scene: Peasant Death”
What will the new Vienna crime thriller be like?
The “Tatort” team Moritz Eisner (Harald Krassnitzer) and Bibi Fellner (Adele Neuhauser) once again have a lot to investigate.
© ARD Degeto/ORF/Petro Domenigg
In “Crime Scene: Farmers’ Death” Eisner and Fellner find themselves caught between the fronts of radical animal rights activists and the meat industry.
That’s what “Crime Scene: Farmers’ Death” is about
A new murder case takes the Viennese “Tatort” team Eisner and Fellner to the idyllic surroundings of Vienna: There, pig farmer Max Winkler lies dead in the stable of the traditional Schoberhof, having already been horribly mauled by the pink omnivores overnight. When the investigators from the capital arrive, the digging into the victim’s family mess and the search for the possible murderer begins straight away.
For Renate Hofmüller (Karin Lischka, 44), the town’s police chief, it is immediately clear that it must have been the three Romanian seasonal workers who she had locked up for the sake of order. The investigations by their cosmopolitan colleagues from Vienna go a little deeper and subsequently unearth numerous other murder suspects.
Are the militant animal rights activists from the “Initiative Pro Tier” behind it, who have committed various acts of sabotage on the farm in the past, hacked the software of the digital stable management system and painted the word “murderer” in blood-red paint on the towering silo?
On the other hand, there are soon indications that the faded Max Winkler is not dealing with an average pig farmer. Rather, the man was apparently obsessed with the idea of becoming the undisputed pig king of Austria and turning his father-in-law’s traditional court upside down with modern business strategies.
As his posthumous business documents reveal, on his way to becoming a big player he got involved with a Bulgarian agricultural multinational operating out of Vienna and made a serious miscalculation. An anonymous complaint against the obscure company, which was received shortly before the murder and points to massive fraud with EU subsidy money, provides another potential motive to get the ambitious large farmer out of the way.
In one fell swoop, the case goes far beyond a provincial homicide and reaches into the highest levels of the Brussels funding commissions and the depths of the Bulgarian agricultural mafia. No wonder that the European public prosecutor’s office also has to get involved to support Bibi and Moritz in the hunt for criminals.
Since the murdered pig baron’s father and widow and the daughter of the foreman Sepp Obermeier (Martin Leutgeb, 57), who was active in the “Initiative Pro Tier”, were not in good terms with him, the crime wall in the Vienna police station was soon bursting filled with photos of suspects and meaningful connections. But ultimately this seemingly highly complex and internationally convoluted case takes an unexpected turn that causes the painstakingly established structure of connections to collapse in one fell swoop…
Is it worth turning on?
Yes, for the sake of completeness, you can certainly watch “Tatort: Bauern Death” if you don’t have a better idea to let off some steam on Sunday evening.
The episode begins promisingly and surprisingly shows the Viennese investigator duo in an unusual light: When they inspect the crime scene in the pigsty, the automatic stable cleaning starts and suddenly makes their stylish big city outfits unusable. Moritz Eisner has to get through the rest of the day in a baggy jogging suit from Obermeier, while Bibi Fellner is provided with 80s chic from his late wife’s estate. Unfortunately, the originality of the story soon goes downhill as soon as the two are back in their dry clothes.
The attempts to turn the tranquil murder in the pigsty into a big “whodunit” thriller by pulling as many potential perpetrators out of the hat as possible seem too trying and transparent. The actually interesting battlefield of the story, the conflict between the protagonists of the radical animal protection NGO and the industrial meat producer faction, is too heavily undermined by the expansion of the combat zone to the level of internationally operating agricultural mafia management.
In contrast to the cheerful pigs on the Schoberhof, Lieutenant Colonel Moritz and Major Bibi stroll through the ideological scenario of the episode astonishingly stiff and bourgeois. When attending a demonstration by the “Initiative Pro Tier”, the script forces her to demonstratively eat a sausage roll, garnished with hairy statements like “If they have their way, only a world without schnitzel is a good world.” – “Do-gooders.” Even Eisner’s platitudes like “It’s just like it always is: first comes food, then morals” regularly lead back to the basic ethical question. Unfortunately, in this “crime scene” case, the chance to explore this without stereotypical sausages is all too often wasted.