When a crime scene running, you look at it with certain expectations. Inspector Murot from Wiesbaden is best seen sitting up straight and never on the comfortable sofa at work, because you have to think a lot. At Schenk and Ballauf in Cologne, people then go through their donation activities and consider supporting a homeless or prostitute charity after all. And in Münster, with Thiel and Boerne, you get in the carnival mood all year round, someone kicks in cow dung, there are many flat bikes, and brother-in-law humor reigns supreme.
So, to celebrate 20 years of investigative work in Munster, one expects at least one person to fall face down into a cake to honor the love story between the ill-tempered detective and the self-drunk forensic scientist. Surprisingly, the episode “A Friend, a Good Friend” is a classic crime thriller, and it’s about: A lawyer who was in the service of a mafia boss is shot. Karl-Friedrich Boerne’s (Jan Josef Liefers) best friend is kidnapped, everything has to do with everything, as investigator Frank Thiel (Axel Prahl) eventually finds out.
Rarely has one seen Boerne vain, rarely Thiel grumpy
So far so good. It doesn’t always have to be a thigh slapper. The quirks of the staff are nevertheless fully appreciated in the film, which was written by Benjamin Hessler and directed by Janis Rebecca Rattenni. Rarely has one seen Boerne vain, rarely Thiel grumpy. Of course, the coroner goes his own way again in the search for the perpetrator, this time very pronounced, which has to do with the fact that the kidnapped man’s wife is his childhood sweetheart. So you see a love-mad Boerne, whose private life receives a lot of attention. Briefly, the beginnings of a psychological thriller shimmer through, then it continues softened and you look back into Boerne’s innocent eyes. And so the plot ripples along, which is garnished with the investigators’ typical ping-pong gags, but is completely free of absurdities. You don’t have to like the over-revving, very often it’s even annoying, but at least it’s what the people of Münster like crime scene makes special.
Can it be said that the film is shockingly boring, that the protagonists seem like they’ve been deflated? Maybe the big surprise after 20 Gaga years should be that you can also do classic crime stories in Münster. At the end you really would have wished for a cake.
The first, Sunday, 8:15 p.m.
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