In this crime scene from Cologne, a huge hole in the landscape plays the secret leading role. Such enormous heaps from coal mining in Lusatia used to bang very well, for example in the RBBpolice call Abyssin the series leekhammer or – a completely different genre, much earlier – in Andreas Dresen’s fantastic feature film Groundman. Now the WDR remembers again that this man-made mad scenery also exists in the west and sends the investigators Ballauf (Klaus J. Behrendt) and Schenk (Dietmar Bär) to the edge of the Garzweiler opencast mine for a quiet, gripping film, for the second time since the episode “Scrapes” from 2005. A practically empty village is left at the edge of the cliff, should come under the excavator, now stands around barricaded after the coal stop, inhabited only by phantom pain and strange figures. Those who never sold despite pressure from “the group”; and those who have been living in “Neu-Bützenich” for a long time, but are still looking after the houses that no longer belong to them. And in the deserted streets – after all, everything has to be in order – the SUV from the security service patrols.
He: “It’s lonely here”. You: “And in Cologne like that?” Karin Bongartz (Barbara Nuts) up the ball.
(Photo: Martin Valentin Menke/WDR/Bavaria Fiction)
on again crime scene from the popular subject of the great German TV depression? Not at all. Because in addition to the melancholy and the force, both humanly and scenically, the story has tension and subtle humour. This no man’s landcrime scene by Torsten C. Fischer based on the book by Eva and Volker A. Zahn tells a wild story about guilt, real estate speculation and revenge – without the boredom that arises when people quickly get a more or less foreseeable role in the plot.
Are the many vintage cars now being replaced in German “crime scenes”?
That’s what it’s about: An old couple wants to die, but only the woman dies. Then the village doctor, who was able to revive the man and she couldn’t, is soon dead. In the doctor’s chic house, his grubby young wife is already hanging around the red wine glass in the morning. Let’s put it this way: This thriller is in no way a commercial for the profession of general practitioner.
In this case, the super-clever ball run occasionally hits its own personal demolition edge. A single deadly sentence from the innkeeper Karin Bongartz (played by the wonderful Barbara Nuts) is enough for this, who is a bit misanthropic and a bit criminal and has taken ball running to her heart, maybe like the pastor once (“He was every tear value”). So Ballauf says to her, close to the people: “It’s lonely here.” She, bone dry: “And in Cologne like that?” After that, he has to walk thoughtfully for many, many kilometers.
Well, it also has to do with the fact that Schenk’s vintage car is failing, and that feels like a very bad sign for all the ostentatiously individual cars that are going through from Stuttgart to Kiel crime scenes curves Presumably, they will soon be replaced by low-emission vehicles one by one.
The first, Sunday, 8:15 p.m.
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