En el lugar del crimen

"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.

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.

I am German and I love German filmmaking, they are able to produce great stuff but they can also produce a huge mess, and "Tatort" shows both sides of the coin.

There are great episodes especially the "Duisburg-Tatort" form the 1980s with Inspector Schimanski.

He was representing the typ of man who lived in the "Ruhrpott" at that time, he was harsh sometimes, drunk a lot and bad organized but he loved the work he was doing and he had great respect for the people who lived in the area because he was one of them.

I highly recommend the episode "Duisburg-Ruhrort" from the early 1980s, it's absolutely amazing, a masterpiece of German filmmaking!!!

So glory the past, so annoying is the present, all "Tatort" episodes no matter where they are if in southern or northern Germany, eastern or western, they have mixed up to a confusable, monotonous and discouraged mass.

I gave the show three stars because the old episodes are great and I hope that there will come better times, but today it is not worth more then 3/10.

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).

Having said this is a great show, I also have to say that I've only seen episodes from the one set in Cologne (and its crossover episodes with Leipzig) and a couple of episodes from Hamburg. Mhz is the only channel that shows Tatort in my area, and they have only shown the detectives from these cities. Mhz had a long break in airing them but as of 2017 they are re-showing the Cologne episodes, and it's been great to see Freddy and Max again. I think Mhz has a pay site for viewing them on the web, and I did notice that Youtube has a lot of them (from many more regions), but the ones I've checked aren't captioned. I don't know German, so Youtube hasn't been helpful to me.

The other reviews cover the general idea of Tatort, and I can't add anymore to them except to say that the Cologne episodes are consistently good. I also liked the two I saw with Mehmet Kurtulus (Hamburg). They had quite a different feel to them, and I hope the station will show more of them; the two I saw made me want to see the others. As mentioned above, Tatort often deals with social issues, and it's interesting to see how Germany addresses them. In a less serious vein, regional cultural differences sometimes appear in the dialogue (and presumably the accents). For instance, people in Cologne seem to have some antipathy toward Westphalians, though I don't know why. Naturally, it's also fun for Americans to hear Max occasionally speak English or to see or hear popular cultural references familiar to people in the U.S. Of course, the main emphasis is solving homicides, and if you enjoy detective shows, I do recommend that you give this show a try.