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

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.

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.

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.

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.