This is not your typical crime show consisting of the known stereotypes with things always working out well for the good guys and permanently teasing you with the city's most iconic touristic places. It's rather a realistic study of the local milieu, consisting of veteran strip-club owners, big headed local politicians, washed-up vagabonds, gloomy drug dealers and high flying businessmen of doubtful provenance.
For solving his cases, Trautmann has to break to rules - just like everyone else on the other side of the law does - much to the dislike of his captain and other police superiors. It's a very thin line he walks on, often endangering colleagues, putting his murder cases and sometimes his own career or even life at risk. Trautmann is a guy who has nothing left to lose. Being divorced, having lost his only child to drugs, he has barely more to live for than his job and his own moral values.
The real gem of this show are the well conceptualized, authentically acting sidekicks like young police officers losing their nerves and screaming at suspects, greasy pool supervisors flirting with their guests and the various hierarchies of mafia henchmen - often portrayed by renowned Austrian actors - which are kept uncommonly authentic, speaking in the hardly understandable Viennese dialect and using what is known as typical "Austrian charm".
"Trautmann" is a spin-off of the highly popular Austrian TV show "Kaisermühlen Blues", bearing the name of it's main protagonist and mainly set in Vienna's cultural diverse 2nd district.
