The big clean up at crime scene begins in the new year and extends until 2025, and an exciting question is how all the investigative personnel will be written out of the script. There are departures in Dresden, Göttingen, Dortmund, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Kiel and Franconia. Will they die in the line of duty, will they be transported away, will they soon end up making pottery in the countryside?
The north starts. “What Remains” is the last case for federal police officer Julia Grosz (Franziska Weisz), who, traumatized by a mission in Afghanistan, met loner Thorsten Falke (Wotan Wilke Möhring) almost eight years ago and with him for 13 episodes in Hamburg and the surrounding area determined. Now the NDR finds that the role of the investigator has been “told out”. Given the situation, there is often a star appearance as a farewell, and so the demure but likeable Grosz is allowed to show in a neighborhood bar that she is actually completely different. She sings indie and punk, songs from Falke’s leather jacket youth, which continues to this day.
Falke broke a promise and even forgot that, that’s life
In terms of service, it’s about false identities, about fixed and migrant biographies that overlap on the way to only wanting the best for everyone, but destroying families in the process. At the center of the crime thriller, for which Marija Erceg wrote the book and which Max Counte directed, is a young man who fled Bosnia as a child. Falke taught him and others boxing as a young police officer in the Billstedt youth club. There was an arson attack on the meeting at the time, and Falke promised the boys that the police would find the perpetrator. She never found him and the boy was deported. Twenty years later he stands in front of Falke, reminding him of the promise he broke.
By the time Falke checks out who it is from his past – there are always a few people who come by – the man is dead. And Falke is struggling. Did he do everything right? Another one who challenges the police officer with the smell of the streets and the sense of justice that doesn’t always have to do with the law.
The mood is dark, the light is thin, harsh contrasts, no heroes. Film noir in the north. Grosz and Falke solve the case primarily in the dim office at the double desk, which will soon no longer be the one they share. How Grosz is doing? Dramatic in the last few meters. Falke says in between: “I’ll go a little further.” Hopefully.
The first, Monday, January 1st, 8:15 p.m.
You can find further SZ series recommendations here.