"Niedrig and Kuhnt" has started off as a fun to watch "scripted reality" TV detective show with the always bored and professional Conny Niedrig and her partner at work, the rakishly casual MSV Duisburg fan Bernie Kuhnt.
The episodes usually begin with us getting a crime teased. Then, after the credits, the detectives come to the crime scene and get information from the securing of evidence service. Sometimes, they also send their co-workers there, which are two of these four: Christian, Thomasy, Kathrin and Nina. They usually have a chat with Dr. Malik, their forensic scientist in charge, and the protagonists later meet Dr. Hohlbein, their pathologist, to get the dead body shown. They meet all characters that are relevant to the story, like friends, familiy, and relatives of the crime victim.
After 20 minutes of exposition, usually the well-dressed Dr. Malik came in to tease the final and decicive evidence which he figured out simultanuously to the story with science, and after a commercial break, they confront the delinquent.
For several years, this structure worked, and the show was fun to watch because of the sympathetic character traits of the main protagonists and their chemistry. Then, budget cuts occurred, and the series became more serious, had less humour and character only scenes in it, and thus became dull. It was a low production show and the changes made it far less than uninteresting: useless. Fortunately, the episodes from the show's golden years are still being shown regularly on TV channel Sat1 Gold, currently on Sundays after "Columbo" and another German scripted reality detective show, "Lenßen & Partner".
A worthy slot.
