Die Kriminalfälle des Majors Zeman

These TV series provide a story of formation the Czechoslovakian Police (1945-9175) based on life story of Jan Zeman, the man, who entered Czechoslovakian National Police quite after the World Wide War 2 as a rookie and became a well-known and respected high grade criminal expert in major rang.

Title of the TV series gives us the key to understand the style of the story and how it has been showed for TV viewer. There are exactly 30 cases (stories). Each case(story) has its own and almost separate storyline. Some cases (stories) are dependent on previous cases(stories)to continue the main storyline. The opening stories consist of 1 TV episode, while other stories consist of 2 TV episodes (on my opinion, it has been made due to popularity of the first stories, to prolong the duration of each case, to keep viewers in dramatic waiting).

Each story presents us a criminal case and shows how Jan Zeman and his colleagues solve a crime riddle. Sometimes crime that heroes face coexists with an unfriendly foreign political and cultural intervention that has been provided to the young socialist Czechoslovakian Republic from the neighborhood capitalist countries...

There are absolutely absent the dirty naked crime and super actions that are now the part of each American-style police movie, in these TV series. The legend of TV series is a truth legend of how the country known as Czechoslovakian Soviet Socialist Republic became strong and vital. We do not have such a country nowadays, "thanks" to capitalism, but we have a great and true filmed story that shows us the life of the ordinary Czechoslovakian peoples from 1945 till 1975 - how they lived, in what conditions, how they get a foods, jobs, loves, emotions and so on. It was a great experiment in the country life, that never comes back ever, and nobody ever will find itself in such a revolutionary conditions, so watch the TV series to be familiar with.

Best play of Vladimir Brabec . His extraordinary behavior gives to TV series a lot of charm. He is really a quite unique to play in such a way. Best theatrical scenes and actors. Discover the Czechoslovakian theatrical and cinema style and actors of 1974-75 years!

These TV series have been dubbed in 70-s to Russian language and still having a TV wide auditory in Russian Federation upon till now , coexist with Columbo, Agatha Christie's Poirot , uncountable Sherlock Holmes's and so on. USSR had its own TV series "Rozdennaya Revolyutsiey" (Born by Revolution) ,filmed in 1974-1977, that are typical to "30 prípadu majora Zemana".

Have a nice time to watch the series!

Otherwise not worth seeing.

This is a 1975 serial celebrating 30 years of Czech Police (1945-75). It tells a story of one man returning from concentration camp in 1945 - a true communist - who joins the newly created communist led police forces and spent his live at the service. In each episode he solves a case. He begins with post-war Nazis hiding in the Czechoslovakia, "agents from the West", continues with couple of murders, as well as some usual crimes. It ends with stories aimed to criticize independent musicians and artists and showing them all as drug addicts.

As for its size, the production costs etc. it is definitely one of the most expensive serials made during the communist era. Many locations were used. Each part is over 80minutes of footage.

The characters are black and white. No mistake ever admitted. It is a serial full of lies, which should not be taken seriously in any way except that this is the truth the communist believed. No joke ever.

It is sometimes aired on TV. I do not think it was ever published on VHS or DVD and never any translation will be made. If you are a scholar seriously studying Czech propaganda film production it is a must to see, but otherwise... not worth wasting your time.