En el lugar del crimen

Working my way through the Cologne series after watching the Kiel series on MHz. I especially like these series due to the pacing and stories. Moreover, I get a tour of different parts of Germany. If subtitles are not a drawback then I recommend Tatort. I kind of hope that MHz will show the really early ones from the 70s and 80s

My wife and I just completed watching all 34 episodes of "Tatort: Borowski", which is about a detective from Kiel, Germany. Pros: The lead detective (Inspector Borowski) is an excellent detective. The plots keep you guessing: you're never sure who did it. Cons: There are obvious holes in many of the plots. In some cases, the episode ends with no resolution of important issues raised in the plot. My wife and I are giving the series a 7.0: it's ok, but we are not recommending it (anything below 7.0, we normally don't watch).

How do you review a series of over 1100 episodes? I have to start by admitting I've only seen thirteen "Lindholm" programmes and two "Cologne" ones.

The first thing that struck me was the cheesy seventies theme music and the dreadful title sequences. I'd honestly thought that I'd downloaded something from fifty years ago. However, it turned out that the Lindholm episodes were set in a recent past where primitive mobile phones were used in the earlier episodes and smartphones towards the later ones. I learnt that the theme and titles had remained the same for fifty years and the programme makers keep them as a tradition.

Despite the Lindholm episodes having the same star, Maria Furtwangler, it's clear that the different programmes were written and directed by a myriad of varied people. The styles were completely different as was the dialogue and plot development. One thing that was consistent and was, I assume, a basic template was that Frau Hauptkommissarin Lindholm was always close to the edge both in her personal life and her investigations. She broke rules with impunity and, in reality, wouldn't have lasted five minutes in any LKA or even local police station.

A few of the cases were solved by coincidences even when she knew who the perp was but she sometimes wasn't allowed to arrest as she didn't have the evidence. However, a chance meeting or finding led her to get her man. It was also slightly annoying that car accidents played such a large part in some of the plots.

Her personal life was a shambles and men came and went with no seeming reason. Mum was on hand to look after her child who simply didn't figure in the final episode.

I can't say much about the couple of Cologne ones I've seen as it was a long time ago, but they seemed to be darker.

All told, the stories were not boring and held the attention for the ninety minutes of each episode. They aren't the most scintillating television I've seen, but worth a look on a rainy afternoon.

"Tatort" (= Crime Scene) is one of the most popular detective series on German TV. Feature length (90 min) episodes air on roughly 30 Sundays of the year - following the evening news at 8:15 p.m.

The public network ARD that shows "Tatort" is organized federally, i.e. it consists of a dozen regional TV stations. Each regional station have their own police team depicted in their region. So, there is a Berlin team, a Hamburg team, and so on - each have their own episodes under the common label. Larger regional stations like WDR (Cologne) add 3 or 4 episodes each year, smaller ones like tiny Radio Bremen just 1.

The style and setting vary with the teams - that is part of the fun of the series. Episodes from Frankfurt have been rather vanguard in terms of cinematography and storytelling, while the Münster team is famed for their witty dialogues and comic effects.

The regional differences also lead to a competition for audiences and public attention. Viewers tend to choose what team episodes to watch - with consequences for audience ratings and public discussions about the poor scripts or the cheap productions that the Tatorte from some stations have been suffering recently.

The feature length and the producers' ambitions to show not only entertaining crime stories but also to present social issues like child abuse, integration of immigrants, or school violence lead to high public awareness for "Tatort". Episodes are regularly reviewed in quality newspapers like Frankfurter Allgemeine or Süddeutsche Zeitung.

There's not a single comment (so far) for 'Tatort'? That's really hard to believe, since it's a very long running and popular series here in Germany. I have seen some episodes, but not enough to consider myself an expert on the series. If you are an expert, please go ahead and add another comment.

Normally I always include a rating for the titles I comment on, but I think it would be unfair to do so in this case. I don't think I have seen any of the episodes from the 70s except for 'Reifezeugnis', and I haven't seen many of those of later years. I don't consider myself an avid fan of the series.

So what can I tell you about 'Tatort' ('crime scene')? The basic idea is interesting. There are about 35 episodes per year (at least nowadays). But you don't get to see the same team of detectives in every episode. There are different teams from different parts of Germany; that's what makes it interesting. (Some episodes even feature teams from other countries, namely Austria and Switzerland.)

But I think that, at least nowadays, too many episodes suffer from bad scripts. Often the cases are too confusing because they cram too much into the 90 minutes running time. If you are interested in examples, go to the user comments page for the episode 'Das Böse'. I have written a comment on it. There's also a somewhat similar comment for 'Der Kormorankrieg', titled 'Execrable' and written by a user called 'moabitnik'. (Please keep in mind that user comments are subject to change and deletion. Though it's unlikely, a comment might be different or gone tomorrow. I only refer to other comments because I think it would be redundant to repeat information that can be read elsewhere.) And I think that in many scripts there's too much 'political correctness', for example there are too many iffy 'power women' among the detectives.

Some more information that might be of interest:

Some episodes were only shown in Austria. They are listed as a spin-off on the 'movie connections' page for 'Tatort'.

'Reifezeugnis' is perhaps the most famous episode. It was directed by Wolfgang Petersen of 'Das Boot' fame and stars a young Nastassja Kinski.

I guess Schimanski, played by Götz George, is the most popular 'Tatort'-detective. He got a spin-off series and two theatrical movies were made with him.

The German experimental rock band Tangerine Dream wrote the title track for 'Das Mädchen auf der Treppe' and scored a hit with it in Germany.

Some episodes are no longer shown as reruns because their content is deemed too controversial. Some episodes have been edited after their original airing, for example because of unwanted product placement.

Every German who has a TV set is required by law to pay fees for the station that produces 'Tatort'. Believe it or not, you have to pay for it even if you don't watch it. So the makers don't have to try hard to get funding for the next episodes. I guess the quality of the series might improve if they had to try harder.

Based on the episodes I have seen in the last few years, I would give 'Tatort' a rating of four points out of ten. But, as I have mentioned above, I might be wrong, since I haven't watched many of the episodes, so I won't rate it.

Edit / addition (27th August 2008): In the last months, I have seen some reruns of old episodes from the 70s and 80s, and some new episodes. There were a lot of good episodes among both of these, so I would now give the series a rating of six points out of ten, because I now guess that the ratio of bad episodes is lower than I had thought before.