TV tip
The path to the abyss: “Babylon Berlin” on free TV
Dark times are approaching: Charlotte Ritter (Liv Lisa Fries) in Berlin at the beginning of the 1930s. photo
© Frédéric Batier/X Films Creative Pool/SKY/ARD Degeto/dpa
Berlin at the turn of the year 1930/1931. While the underworld fights a bloody war for supremacy in the capital, the future of the Weimar Republic is also being decided.
You can tell from the first episode that something has changed. With the new season “Babylon “Berlin” still has a bit of a glittering atmosphere, but the atmosphere is much darker. This time the story begins at the end of 1930 and also tells of the rise of the National Socialists in Germany.
Commissioner Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch) will soon be seen in a uniform that still raises many questions. The fourth round begins on free TV on Sunday at 8:15 p.m. on Erste. The episodes ran on Sky last year.
It has now been around six years since the first episode of “Babylon Berlin” aired. The series was considered a sensation at the time, not only because of the production budget and the fact that public television worked with a pay channel. The series was also quite daring.
Extremely complex narrative threads, for example, with political and historical complications. This continues in the fourth season. This time Charlotte Ritter (Liv Lisa Fries) is on New Year’s Eve duty with the homicide squad when a department store is broken into. During the police operation, a suspect dies under brutal circumstances.
Guest appearance by Max Raabe
Her sister Toni also gets into trouble, which soon presents Ritter with a difficult question. At the same time, an SA troop moves through the city and destroys Jewish-owned shops. When Charlotte Ritter learns that Gereon Rath has also joined the crowd, the already uncomplicated relationship between the two begins to falter.
The images remain exciting in the new season, even if they are sometimes a bit overwrought. In any case, Inspector Rath sits in the moss covered in blood in a surreal sequence. Oh well. As in previous seasons, a bonus is the music. This time Max Raabe makes a guest appearance on the song “A Day Like Gold”.
This time too, several stories are told in parallel, with actors such as Lars Eidinger, Meret Becker, Hannah Herzsprung, Benno Fürmann, Joachim Meyerhoff and Martin Wuttke. It’s about criminal police officers and wrestling clubs, about a dance competition in “Moka Efti”, about Jewish life and rampant anti-Semitism.
The situation is getting darker
The series is still well told and develops quite a pull, especially after you have watched the first episodes. The template for the new season is said to be Volker Kutscher’s novel “Goldstein”.
“A day like gold. A hundred thousand volts in the veins. A night like velvet and silk,” sings Max Raabe in the title song. It also says: “Be careful, because it’s very easy to forget: nothing stays the same.” A sentence that is usually true in life. With “Babylon Berlin” the historical situation becomes darker with the new season, but the series creators keep many things that have proven themselves. There have been worse sequels to series.