TV tip
Desperate fatherly love in Hamburg’s “crime scene”
Police chief inspector Falke (Wotan Wilke Möhring) together with inspector Grosz (Franziska Weisz) on the trail of a sniper. photo
© Christine Schröder/SWR/ARD/dpa
A sniper shoots at a truck driver, the perpetrator flees. Falke and Grosz examine the trucking company. Is it about a disturbed individual offender or a fight among truckers?
A tree. A shot. A sniper. This is how the hamburger begins”Tatort” with Chief Inspector Thorsten Falke (Wotan Wilke Möhring) and Chief Inspector Julia Grosz (Franziska Weisz) this Wednesday at 10 p.m. on SWR television. So it’s already clear at the beginning who was responsible for the first deaths in the crime thriller “Querschläger” – a repeat from the Year 2019 – on his conscience: family man Steffen Thewes (Milan Peschel).
It is unclear, however, why the inconspicuous man shot at the load of a truck at a service area and killed an uninvolved truck driver with a ricochet. And when investigating in the trucker milieu, Falke and Grosz initially encounter a wall of silence. Only gradually does “Tatort” author Oke Stielow bring light into the darkness.
Because Thewes has a daughter who is bedridden with a degenerative spinal disease and will probably never live to see Christmas. The parents alleviate their daughter’s pain with semi-illegal drugs. Her last hope for a cure is a very expensive operation in the USA. Thewes, who earns an average salary as a customs officer, is so desperate to save his daughter’s life that he hatches a dangerous plan. When it goes wrong in many ways, the worried family man becomes an incredibly dangerous, desperate man. How many lines will he cross for his daughter?
The Norddeutscher Rundfunk production sensitively examines the deep feelings of loving fathers – and the tightrope walk between what is permitted and what is not permitted when one’s own child is in danger. Director Stephan Rick underscores the inner conflict and desperation of the protagonists with close-ups, scenes with the hand-held camera, drone shots and fast cuts reminiscent of a merry-go-round of thoughts.
Wotan Wilke Möhring liked filming this “crime scene”: “I thought the story was great because it tells of a human dilemma packed into a criminal case. A man who was previously the super good, the super decent, who worked for the state for years and had to watch everything being done illegally by the way. I found it very interesting that this particularly good person is susceptible to the seeds of evil,” said Möhring, according to the press release.
In “Querschläger” Falke’s soft father side is also shown in this context. When he thoughtfully strokes the head of his sleeping, almost grown-up son with a cat in his arms and in his underpants, there is something sympathetically tender about it. The spectators don’t have to do without the little teasing at eye level between the two inspectors Falke and Grosz.