Although the main point of the series was to reenact true crimes and bring the work of the police into the limelight, the producer were so clever always to get some original characters into it. In this, the fifth episode, Alexander Kerst, top billed as investigator and voice-over storyteller gets upstaged by his boss, played by Helmut Peine. His "Kriminalrat" is loud, direct, and very much self-assured. While Kerst plays his part pretty straight, there are some little funny vignettes around the elderly boss that makes him more interesting and peculiar.
The expose is as so often very well done, giving the film the necessary real life touch and blends smoothly into the crime story about to unfold. The crime itself is not a complicated one, there are a few witnesses and slowly one piece leads to another. At the end the way it is solved holds a little surprise for the last minute.
There are a few aspects that make this series so unique:
1. The different running times. It varies between just over 30 minutes to almost 2 hours. 2. The number of episodes issued per year. That ranges between five and one but in general the become fewer the longer the series runs. In between are years with not a single entry. 3. Despite all this variations all episodes are written and directed by the same two man, Wolfgang Menge and Jürgen Roland.
The pacing of a number of episodes appear by todays standards very uneven. Usually the beginning is told in a very forceful manner but while the story goes on there are often scenes you really don't know why they suddenly slow everything done so much. This could be an extremely long pan through a room like in this episode, but it could also be an entire scene with dialogue that leads nowhere.
Anyway, the show definitely has its merits and it gives you a very accurate picture of (West)-Germany in the 50´ and 60´.
The expose is as so often very well done, giving the film the necessary real life touch and blends smoothly into the crime story about to unfold. The crime itself is not a complicated one, there are a few witnesses and slowly one piece leads to another. At the end the way it is solved holds a little surprise for the last minute.
There are a few aspects that make this series so unique:
1. The different running times. It varies between just over 30 minutes to almost 2 hours. 2. The number of episodes issued per year. That ranges between five and one but in general the become fewer the longer the series runs. In between are years with not a single entry. 3. Despite all this variations all episodes are written and directed by the same two man, Wolfgang Menge and Jürgen Roland.
The pacing of a number of episodes appear by todays standards very uneven. Usually the beginning is told in a very forceful manner but while the story goes on there are often scenes you really don't know why they suddenly slow everything done so much. This could be an extremely long pan through a room like in this episode, but it could also be an entire scene with dialogue that leads nowhere.
Anyway, the show definitely has its merits and it gives you a very accurate picture of (West)-Germany in the 50´ and 60´.
