Sooooooo what is this cool german (?) show I'm seeing on my dash? 👀
This turned out long, so please click to read more!
Oooooooookay, soooooooo:
There is this long-running crime show on German television called Tatort (crime scene) - and I do mean long-running, the first episode was broadcast in 1970! The first broadcast of a new episode is almost always on a Sunday at a quarter past eight (prime time). In total there are almost 1300 episodes! The good thing is though, that you don't have to watch every single episode because it's not one continuous story.
Rather, there are different teams which investigate crime in different cities, and while there are some teams/characters which have been around for a very long time, we do get new teams regularly.
In 2020 a new series with a new team of police officers started in Saarbrücken (capital of the smallest federal state, disregarding the city states). AND BOY DID IT START!
The structure is almost always the same - there's a crime of the day which gets solved within 90 minutes. As the main characters are recurring, you usually also get some personal info about them and their relationships in every episode, but truly overarching B-plots are somewhat rare, especially as it's typically at least a few months until a new episode for a team is released (there are currently 18 teams in the rotation, which all get one to three new episodes per year).
With our current team for Tatort Saarbrücken we do get a larger focus on the characters and an actual B-plot over several episodes - which is especially surprising as it's produced by the smallest of the federal/regional public broadcasters and only gets one (ONE!!!!!) episode per year. Which we just had. And it ended on a massive cliffhanger. And now we have to wait. A YEAR!!! Anyways:
Our four main characters are a team of police inspectors investigating homicides.
I present to you:
Adam Schürk:
Our wet little meow meow, loves wearing double denim, police inspector that used to work in Berlin but recently returned to his hometown of Saarbrücken because he could become the partner of his former best friend -
Leo Hölzer:
the team lead, and, it turns out, the one who as a teenager put Adam's abusive (and criminal) dick of a father into a coma by hitting him with a spade to stop him beating Adam to death (hence the nickname "Spatort", a portmonteau of "Spaten" (spade) and "Tatort" (crime scene), which combined make a sort of "spade scene").
When Adam turns up, Leo is struggling to keep his team together, especially butting heads with
Esther Baumann:
the only competent one, initially very much questions Leo's authority and capability as team lead, still very much annoyed (and rightfully so) at the questionable methods that especially Adam uses to investigate their homicides ("Adam style" - which means dangerous, and probably illegal), speaks French (Saarbrücken is very close to France) and flirts with pretty fellow female French police officers, and calls the last member of the team pet names
Pia Heinrich:
why yes, almost every gif tumblr suggested for her shows her eating! In the first episodes I'd call her the laid back one, not as high strung as Esther, not as utterly insanely codependent as Adam and Leo, but oh how the turn tables! In the latest episode she's shown to be taking adhd medicine to be able to stay awake longer and investigate a cold case of a missing person that's probably going to fuel the B-plot for the next set of episodes.
When I watched their first episode, I was sitting there like - is anyone else seeing this??? I can't be the only one seeing this???? And the only place I could think of to check was tumblr - and lo, and behold, I was not the only one seeing it!
What we were seeing was:
Leo and Adam, childhood best friends (in contrast to what I've written above, in the following gif it's actually Leo, not Adam, who's double denim-ing)
it's revealed that Adam protected Leo from bullies at school, while he himself was being trained/abused/shut into wardrobes by his father, a criminal (to put it mildly). When they are discovered by Adam's father in the tree house, he beats Adam so much that Leo fears for his life and takes a spade and hits Adam's father with it, who ends up in a coma because of that. The boys hide the spade attack by feigning an accident and setting a fire to destroy evidence.
At some point after this, Adam leaves Saarbrücken/runs away, and has apparently no contact to Leo until he suddenly appears in Leo's office as his new partner!
They are of course immediately called away to a homicide and we get our first hug:
At this point I was biting back screams, kicking my feet in excitement and heading to tumblr. They've been reunited for like half an hour or so at this point!!!!!
Throughout the in total now seven episodes we also get scenes like these:
(this is Leo arresting Adam because Adam's father committed suicide in a way that made it seem as though Adam killed him - no I am not kidding and yes it involves frogs) Of course Leo works hard to clear his name and get him released form prison - which is actually when the above hug happens.
AND OF COURSE:
Are we being queerbaited? I honestly don't know - it could just be an accidental queerbait where we do most of the work ourselves, who knows, they might actually make them canon (in like five to fifteen years) - as it is, the last episode didn't have such a major focus on them and their relationship which my shipping heart of course doesn't like, but it did leave more room for the girls and for developing the relationships between the different constellations within the team and I did like that a lot!
Annnnnnd, we did end with something of a hug between the two (spoiler alert I guess^^°):
this is Leo's head on Adam's lap - unfortunately post explosion and of course the cliffhanger left us hanging before we could tell whether Leo's still alive or not! (guess why we are screaming)
Anyways, getting into Tatort Saarbrücken is both not a huge commitment (there's only six episodes of 90 minutes each so far) and a huge commitment because after each episode you'll have to wait A YEAR, but I think it's totally worth it!
Currently all episodes should be available in the ARD Mediathek, for anyone who can access it and speaks German (German subtitles available too). I do believe there are versions with English subtitles floating around as well, I can try and find them, if there's any interest!
I can go into (WAY) more detail on the different episodes or crimes or characters or relationships, if you're interested, but this is probably already way longer than you expected so I'll stop here!
