Tatort

Currently there are three seasons running on MHz identified as Tatort: Cologne (crime scene, Cologne) going from 1998 to 2007 that feature Inspectors Max Ballauf and Freddy Schenk (actors Klaus Behrendt and Dietmar Bar). The two actors work well together and it's interesting to see them adapt to new technology and changes in police procedure. Those changes aren't part of the stories but just note how quickly things change.

At times Max and Freddie's personal issues can surface in an episode to add to building of their characters, and at times as crucial story points. Max has even been known to sleep with a suspect. Several episodes deal with social problems and the stories can be very gritty and the conclusions quite depressing.

At times both my wife and I yell at the screen when obviously bad conclusions are reached by the inspectors but you do have to fill about 90 minutes per episode. At times the episodes seem more about commenting on social issues rather than being solid mystery stories. In spite of some of these commentaries, the two forge ahead but they seem to get to finding the perp more by dumb luck than solid detective work. But they do doggedly pursue their quarry and usually catch the suspect.

Like any series, there are good episodes and disappointing ones but Max and Freddy are worth a look.

For some reasons many people in germany like this sunday-series. It's often bad written, bad acted and always-the-same kind of stuff. The crime stories are often flawed, the police is often praised to heaven and the makers too often think they do a very artistic form of german movie making...and then they do the same again and again and again.

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.

They are more than 30 individual TV shows, Some of the best to me is 1.Cenk Batu -Undercover Agent 2.Fegefeuer the english is Purgatory 3.Bukow and Konig

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.