The new commissioner Katharina Tempel (Franziska Hartmann) passes the toughest test right at the beginning. With a lot of charm and some cake, the bold investigator manages to get hold of a neat old building on the hotly contested Hamburg housing market.
Only gradually do we then realize that something is wrong here, because Katharina actually lives with her husband, the police spokesman Volker Tempel (Florian Stetter) and son Linus in a penthouse directly on the Elbe. And why did she give up her well-paid job in the press office and return to field service?
“What we hide” is the name of the first episode of the new ZDF crime series “Ein Fall für Katharina Tempel”, which is well worth seeing Good: On the surface, the Tempels appear to be the perfect couple, but irritations are mounting, and the interesting thing is that the spouses themselves don’t want to face the obvious. Therapy is always done by others. Not least from this dichotomy, this unusually gripping thriller draws its tension. Incidentally, the TV audience is already familiar with the figure of the policewoman Katharina Tempel two episodes of the “Helen Dorn” thrillers in the second. Now she has her own line, and it’s starting out promising.
Katharina can only trust her slightly older colleague Georg König (Stephan Szász), with whom she is supposed to solve the mysterious kidnapping of a couple of doctors. Ulla Leitermann (Christiane von Poelnitz) runs a fertility practice together with her husband Hans (Jörg Pose). We later learn that abortions were also performed there. A few days later, Hans Leitermann was found alive on his boat, and there is still no trace of his wife.
What we hide: No light crime fare
Some clues lead to a group of militant abortion opponents, with whom the siblings Natalie (Alberta von Poelnitz) and Sascha Matchevski (Jonas Halbfas) seem to be connected. Her father, who is urgently suspected of crime, has disappeared, the older Natalie lovingly takes care of her brother, who is particularly dependent on attention because of his Down syndrome. The circumstances of the kidnapping, on the other hand, are becoming more and more mysterious: after some time, Katharina and Georg discover an underground treatment room.
This is not everyday crime fare that director Francis Meletzky and screenwriter Elke Rössler serve us. The case goes to the kidneys, and between the ingeniously designed plot twists, the dark field of domestic violence gradually comes to light. And it’s not just about the others.
With great intensity and empathy, Franziska Hartmann (“Neuland”) embodies investigator Katharina Tempel, who slowly has to understand that almost nothing is right in her private life anymore.
Hanife Sylejmani brings some light-heartedness to this gloomy, North German crime drama as the curious computer expert Dela, who aptly describes the mood towards the end: “If you look into the abyss long enough, the abyss will look into you”. The first serve of “Ein Fall für Katharina Tempel” reverberates for a long time and makes you want more. We like to look into these abysses.
