The network of relationships in the Saarland crime scene-Commissioners Leo Hölzer (Vladimir Burlakov) and Adam Schürk (Daniel Sträßer) is quite complex, so only the essentials for this one crime scene still need to know from the last episode: Schürk’s father left his son 1.2 million in blood money. From this chunk, his colleague Hölzer diverts 100,000 euros and uses it to infiltrate a gang of young gambling addicts. (The fact that it works so smoothly is completely unbelievable, but with the damn money, anything works.) At the very beginning, a woman is dead, but this storyline is lost because the wild ride of the kick-addicted and suspicious bettors or bettors in the view is taken. Two men, two women: large sums of money and sometimes lives are at stake when betting on who can hold their breath the longest, who can get whom into bed, who can get whose heart rate to over a hundred. In principle, you can bet on anything: a thousand euros that the pigeon over there won’t fly away in the next ten seconds.
The running commissioners look as if they were reenacting the Federal Youth Games
With “The Curse of Money,” author Hendrik Hölzemann and director Christian Theede once again tell a story for young people crime scene-Audience, i.e. a generation that is primed to constantly compare and be compared. On social media, everyone competes with everyone else, the breathless competition of gamblers in this crime scene illustrates the current mood quite well. On the other hand, that is crime scene but not up to date. The inspectors are illuminated so extensively that the female inspectors remain just accessories – an astonishingly museum-like figure tableau. Furthermore, if there is constant music – whispering, whispering, noisy, alarming – over the scene, that is rarely a good sign. The candidates run endlessly through a dark factory hall, but despite all the threatening music, they look as if they are reenacting the Federal Youth Games. And you don’t know whether the intention is actually to create tension or just a parody of tension. When one of the happiness seekers says: “What you don’t have in your head, you have in your legs” – that’s where he’s geared up to be fit for the present crime scene then linguistically ended up in the age of former Commissioner Max Palu.
At the end the pigeon comes into the picture again, Inspector Hölzer counts down the countdown, but the pigeon doesn’t wait until zero and starts fluttering prematurely. Who can blame her?
The first, Sunday, 8:15 p.m.
You can find further SZ series recommendations here.