The Berlin “Tatort: The Victim” (December 18, 8:15 p.m., the first) marks the first solo crime thriller by Commissioner Robert Karow (Mark Waschke, 50). Although he’s not on duty this time, he’s still dealing with a murder case during his “special leave”.
After the death of his colleague Nina Rubin (Meret Becker, 53), Robert Karow is investigating solo in this case: a man of Karow’s age is found dead in a wooded area. He died from a shot in the head. Everything at the crime scene points to a milieu execution, as Karow immediately states, although he is not responsible for the case. But Karow knows the dead man, Maik Balthasar (Andreas Pietschmann, 53), from his youth and finds out that he was an undercover agent.
Maik worked for Mesut Günes (Sahin Eryilmaz, 38), a well-known Berlin nightclub owner who is involved in numerous violent crimes, which, however, could never be clearly proven. Günes’ fingerprints are found on the murder weapon. Prosecutor Sara Taghavi (Jasmin Tabatabai, 55) finally sees her chance to bring Günes to justice. However, he denies the murder. To the public prosecutor’s annoyance, Karow is not satisfied with the obvious circumstantial evidence. Although she instructs him to stay out of it, the inconsistencies in the case do not leave him alone.
In order to find out what really happened, he takes a vacation, moves undercover into Maik’s apartment and follows in his footsteps. Camilla (Kim Riedle, 40), who works in Günes’ club and knew Maik well, becomes his ally. More and more he slips into the role of the dead man and dives deeper and deeper into his own past…
Yes. Relatively at the beginning of the crime story, which is very exciting for long stretches, two small children put together a jigsaw puzzle. Similarly, the inspector tries to put the many individual parts together into one big whole – and with him the viewers. Maik Balthasar explains an important element in the film in one of the many flashbacks: “The rules in mafia-like structures are almost always the same around the world in all cultures: Everything is based on trust, respect, honor, strength and fear – macho bullshit. Stupid , but reliable.”
In further flashbacks, a lot is told about the childhood friendship between Karow and Balthasar. Since the opening episode of the Berlin team in 2015, the mostly selfish and ruthless investigator has not been seen so emotionally. “For me, what was special about this ‘crime scene’ was that the focus was not on a main role in the episode, but on the investigator himself. The case is also Karow and Karow is the case. The screenplay was both a thriller and a psychogram. That I found it extraordinary,” enthuses director Stefan Schaller.
Not bad prerequisites for Karow’s next Berlin crime phase, in which Corinna Harfouch (68) enters as Susanne Bonard, former LKA size and lecturer at the police academy. The two-part opening episode “Tatort: Nothing but the truth” is scheduled to air in 2023. At the latest then we will know whether Karow gets along with her as well as with a person in “Tatort: The Victim”. With his new friendliness, he says about them: “In the top ten of the people I really like, you’re in second place.”
A small detail should not go unmentioned: Actor Andreas Pietschmann and his colleague Jasmin Tabatabai also really like each other in real life. The two live together with their two children (born 2009 and 2013) in Berlin.
