What a start. Something special has to happen for the first to give the “crime scene” a double episode. Just like in March 2020, when the teams from Dortmund and Munich declared war on the mafia in a crossover on the 50th anniversary of the ARD Sunday crime thriller. Five years earlier, Maria Furtwängler had to drill a particularly tough board as Commissioner Charlotte Lindholm, also in a double episode. On Easter Sunday and Easter Monday (ARD, each 8:15 p.m) there is a new reason for a double episode: The premiere of actress Corinna Harfouch as a “crime scene” investigator alongside Mark Waschke.
“It’s bigger than I thought,” that’s not what Harfouch’s character Susanne Bonard says, the former head of the Berlin homicide squad who now wants to teach the youngsters at the police academy what responsibility this job entails. Rather, this sentence comes from the police officer Rebecca Kästner (Kaya Marie Möller), who called her former trainer late at night because she didn’t know who else to share her life-threatening knowledge with.
But Susanne Bonard has other concerns. She has just learned how the police students at the academy are incited with right-wing extremist slogans. That’s why she ignores the desperation of the security police, who commits suicide shortly after the call. But it’s not just Commissioner Karow, aka Mark Waschke, who doesn’t really believe in the suicide theory. Because what mother kills herself in front of her child.
It’s bigger than I thought.
Police officer Rebecca Kästner (Kaya Marie Möller) in the first episode of “Tatort” with Corinna Harfouch as the homicide inspector.
Bonard also has her doubts about the course of events. And because the director of the police academy wants to sweep the dubious teaching methods of her colleague Götz Lennart (Thomas Niehaus) under the carpet, she returns to active service in the homicide squad after twelve years. Homicide detective Karow, who works solo after the death of his colleague Nina Rubin (Meret Becker), is initially not very enthusiastic. “When was the last time you held a gun in your hand?” he reacts sceptically. But Susanne Bonard not only convinces the sometimes brash inspector, Corinna Harfouch is also credible in the new role.
Which may also be due to the fact that the “Tatort” double episode “Nothing but the truth” operates hard on reality. The political thriller follows the criminal case. And in fact everything is much bigger than expected: Racial profiling in everyday police work, plans for a coup by the New Right, dangerous arms deals and powerful private security companies, a protection of the Constitution that places itself above the law. Everything was already there as individual cases.
Corinna Harfouch is satisfied with the choice of topics for the premiere episodes. “I’ve been dealing with the subject my whole life,” she says in an interview that will be published in the Tagesspiegel in the next few days. One thing is certain: the Berlin “crime scene” once again condenses reality. It is now up to the viewers to judge whether this is perhaps too much of a good thing.
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