“Polizeiruf 110” from Rostock
Then I’ll be gone – Charly Hübner’s remarkable departure
In his last case in “Polizeiruf 110”, Alexander Bukow, played by Charly Hübner, simply drove away in the car.
© NDR / Christine Schroeder / ARD
In the end, he simply drove off in his car: With Charly Huebner’s unexpectedly bloodless departure from the “Police Call” series, the creators achieved a real feat – one that has an impact on the future.
The viewers had to expect the worst beforehand: Even before the broadcast of the “Police Call” episode “None of Us” it was known that it would be Charly Huebner’s last assignment as Inspector Alexander Bukow. And it was feared that the bearded investigator would not leave the series alive.
There are numerous examples of this from the recent past. Cenk Batu (Mehmet Kurtulus) from Hamburg, Nils Stedefreund (Oliver Mommsen) from Bremen and, most recently, Lessing from Weimar (Christian Ulmen) were all shot in the “Tatort” scene. Also for the chief detective Nadeshda Krusenstern (Friederike Kempter) from Münster and the Cologne crime assistant Franziska Lüttgenjohann (Tessa Mittelstedt) her service ended fatally.
The fears were all the more justified since all media representatives were denied the final quarter of an hour of Hübner’s final “police call” operation. The demonstration ended at the point when Commissioner Bukow, embodied by him, went into a hail of bullets.
“Police call 110”: Charly Hübner drives away
But the makers of this episode (book: Eoin Moore and Anika Wangard, director: Eoin Moore) managed to surprise: Bukow survived the shooting, but got his fingers dirty again by murdering a man. He finally drew conclusions from this: Bukow quit duty and drove off in his car. To get clear in your head, as he says.
The big question was until the last minute: Would his girlfriend and now fiancé Katrin König (Anneke Kim Sarnau) accompany him? That couldn’t actually be an option, because it was already known in advance that Sarnau would continue without Charly Hübner in the future – but with his real wife Lina Beckmann at her side.
Which is probably the main reason why the authors opted for a bloodless ending: If König had lost her future husband, the investigator figure, who was already marked by fate, would have further complained.
But as it is, the trick has succeeded in giving Charly Hübner an exit, which enables the other characters to continue. At the end of “None of us” something very rare happens in the Rostock “police call”: Katrin König smiles. The audience has every reason to do the same in view of this beautiful ending.