On Sunday evenings, about a quarter of the time....the wife and I end up watching ARD (German public TV) and the 8:15 show....Tatort. In the wife's words, if there is literally anything else possible to watch....fine. Tatort is the last resort for German TV action on each Sunday evening.
My description of Tatort? It's a show that has been around for thirty years and the formula revolves around 20 different police detectives/German cities. A murder has occurred, and the ninety minutes centers on the actions to determine the guilty party. On 5-percent of the occasions, you know the guilty party in the first ten minutes.
Some of these shows are well written, and takes you through a dozen-odd angles. Some have decent acting. Some.....well....just marginally tell a story, and you reach a point about halfway through the piece...wishing you'd watched 'Trucker-Babes' or 'Cooking Impossible'.
This past Sunday night was one of the worst episodes I've seen, and the story failed on various levels.
The murdered centered on this young German guy. The killer? Well....it was an American non-secret spy gal, who worked at the US Frankfurt consulate....who happened to be a double-agent (apparently working for the Russians as well), and she had this fake daughter (the daughter wasn't even aware of her fakeness in the whole situation). The husband? Some nut-job (my description).
Maybe after watching a number of Tom Clancy novels, the script writer probably thought they could invent some kind of Tatort script that was Tom Clancyish in nature.
As all of this ended....the wife killing her husband, then coming to attempt the murder of her fake daughter...the two detectives come to 'save-the-day' and arrest the secret double-agent spy, and then find that she'll be sent back to the US, without facing justice in Germany....it all become a marginalized ninety-minute piece.
It's not a harsh criticism of the series....there are always a handful of well done scripts and shows, but on the other side of this....there are some really marginal pieces which just don't work. So if you ever sit there and the TV guide comes up to say the 'Funkstille' Tatort version is coming on shortly....do yourself a favor and flip over to some penguin documentary or some 1966 cowboy movie.
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