Investigator Moritz Eisner asks the right question on the way to the scene where a murder occurred: “A farm with 1,200 pigs – is that still a farm?” If something gets too big, it can eventually change its character negatively – this applies to farms, but also to crime scenes from Vienna, which are often excellent as milieu studies, for example. But when they try to illuminate the depths of the world again and at the same time deal with arms trafficking, smuggling crime and clan violence, it seems overambitious and confused.
The inspectors Eisner (Harald Krassnitzer) and Bibi Fellner (Adele Neuhauser) regularly tear it out. That means: If it gets too overloaded, you look forward to the charismatic interaction between the two. This doesn’t make the cases themselves any better.
“Peasant Death” by Sabine Derflinger (book: Lukas Sturm) is a classic case of overload. At the beginning pigs appear and a dead man lies in the yard, badly chewed. At the end, pigs appear again and a sad man wants to take another look at them in peace. These are touching, moving moments. In between, the episode deals with the topics of factory farming, evasion of funding, nefarious feed manufacturers and aggressive animal rights activists. And the stable control system has also been hacked. Because the Viennese – true wordsmiths that they are – are best at analyzing the mistakes in their own piece, says Bibi Fellner: “The pig farmer from the Austrian provinces in a quarrel with a major Bulgarian industrialist becomes a whistleblower at the EU fraud authority.” This describes the overload very accurately.
“Free world – free pigs” – that’s what activists here also wear on their shirts in private
There is also the woodcut-like depiction of the staff. The cold careerist, the concerned activist. And in animal rights activists’ households, people also run around privately wearing a shirt that says “Free World – Free Pigs”. In terms of slogans, the Viennese could have been more ambiguous. Eisner and Fellner get wet and need new clothes because the pigs’ automatic stable cleaning has started. And Eisner makes do with a tracksuit that looks like it’s from the times of Schneckerl Prohaska and Schoko Schachner.
Otherwise, this time, not even the revered investigators will take notice, but rather routinely comment on the event from the sidelines. Says Bibi Fellner: “Don’t you think that most people don’t care where sausage comes from?” That’s what hard-to-restrain insults sound like.
The first, Sunday, 8:15 p.m.
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