Just one last dinner with colleagues, then Professor Boerne (Jan Joseh Liefers) will be gone for three months. The coroner has taken unpaid leave to write a book – about death. He wants to travel to Holland by car, but he has a serious accident on the way there. While Boerne is in a coma and fighting for his life, Commissioner Frank Thiel (Axel Prahl) does not believe it was an accident and investigates on his own.
Inspector Thiel and Professor Boerne have been investigating in Münster since 2002 and are by far the most popular “crime scene” characters. The “Limbus” case now dares something new. There’s plenty of humor in this episode, too, but it’s less silly than many of the duo’s other cases. The thriller takes place on two levels: On the one hand, there is limbo, a transitional area between life and death in Catholic theology. Boerne is waiting there to see whether he is going up or down in the paternoster lift, i.e. to heaven or hell. On the other hand, the investigations are progressing in the real world and Boerne appears as a kind of ghost that influences what is happening. He also gets to hear unpleasant things about himself. His assistant Silke Haller (ChrisTine Ursprechen) says: “Sometimes he’s a real disgust, so arrogant, self-absorbed, petty and stingy.”
So that Professor Boerne and his assistant are not among the dead in the end, a dramaturgical trick is required that is not entirely logical. Overall, the story is also a bit one-dimensional and unfortunately turned out to be predictable.
On his way to the afterlife, Boerne meets Thiel’s former assistant Nadeshda Krusenstern (Friederike Kempter). She was brutally murdered in the New Year’s “crime scene” in 2020. “Are you dead too?” Krusenstern asks the professor in horror. Meanwhile, Thiel has to make do with his new assistant Mirko Schrader (Björn Meyer). However, he is far from being as sharp as Krusenstern was.
Fans of Boerne and Thiel get their money’s worth here: the two main actors can be seen in almost every scene.
The “Tatort: Limbus” was first broadcast on November 8, 2020. ARD repeats the case on Sunday, August 20, 2023 at 8:15 p.m.
