“Tatort” today from Franconia: A murder leads Commissioner Felix Voss into his own past

“Tatort” from Franconia
The inspector and his great love: A murder leads Felix Voss into his own past

This time it’s getting personal: “Tatort” commissioner Felix Voss mourns the death of a close friend who was killed. The investigations lead Voss back to his own student days and awaken old feelings for a woman he was deeply in love with.

What’s the matter?

There was radio silence for years between Chief Inspector Felix Voss (Fabian Hinrichs) and his old friend Marcus Borchert (Pirmin Sedlmeir). One evening, Voss receives a call from Borchert. He invites him to his place in the Upper Palatinate, where he now works as a pastor. Borchert announces that in his sermon he will reveal something about a mutual friend of the two, Antonia “Toni” Hentschel. She was the great love of the inspector during his student days in Berlin. But the sermon never comes: Marcus Borchert is found murdered in the church. In addition, Voss has to learn that Toni committed suicide two years ago. While the local police classified the pastor’s death as a robbery because valuable crosses were stolen from the sacristy, Voss suspects that the two deaths are connected and begins to investigate.

Why is the “High Mass for Toni” case worthwhile?

An imposing villa, a domineering patriarch and a mysterious suicide of the eldest daughter: the film (screenplay: Bernd Lange, director: Michael Krummenacher) presents the conflicts within a wealthy industrial family in an attractive and exciting way. Together with the investigators Voss and Ringelhahn, the viewer is immersed in a world in which everything appears flawless on the outside, but more and more abysses open up. The film also plays with the thought: How would my life have been if I had made a different decision? A question that one or the other viewer might ask themselves. At the end, the crime thriller comes up with a brilliant twist.

What bothers?

The investigating commissioner as the center of the action – this perspective has already been taken in many “crime scenes” and is therefore not really new. It is a very personal story that is extremely tailored to Felix Voss. Among other things, the film looks back on the inspector’s student days. Visually, however, there is no real change between then and now. Another cast of the young Voss would have been the better alternative.

The commissioners?

In this case, chief inspector Paula Ringelhahn (Dagmar Manzel) is more a friend than a colleague for Felix Voss. She takes care of him when he is struck down with a laceration on his head, he shares his private memories with her. As a team, the two harmonize remarkably well, for other investigators of the Franconian “crime scene” such as Commissioner Wanda Goldwasser (Eli Wasserscheid) there only remains the extra role.

Turn on or off?

The last Franconian “crime scene” was broadcast in May 2022. So it’s high time for a new case – and it’s really worth seeing.

The team from Franconia also investigated these cases: