Streaming series review - Tatort: Bremen

Tatort: Bremen **1/2 (out of five) Tatort is the umbrella label for a German TV crime drama that’s been running since the 1970s with a unique format. It’s an anthology series with different casts and production companies in a dozen cities, each cranking out their own set of protagonists and crimes. This streaming release contains nine 90-minute telefilms, all set in Bremen with a different crime as the main theme in each, originally aired between 2004 and 2014. Tatort is a German term for crime scene. MHzChoice is already streaming about 150 episodes from seven other cities, and now adding this one.

Bremen’s team of homicide cops in these procedurals is led by middle-aged Inga (Sabine Postel) and her younger partner Stedefreund (Oliver Mommsen). The motives for their set of murders are diverse, usually motivated by some other criminal enterprise, large or small. Bremen’s place on the Weser River makes it a major commercial shipping hub, which figures prominently in many of the plots, and broadens the range of locations for the series. As with most European crime dramas, the process is more intellectual than physical. More of the action occurs off-camera than on. Corpses are generally seen only briefly without much visible gore. Our protagonists engage in few fights and fire very few bullets. There’s little levity. A small percentage of the running times are spent on personal issues, rather than the crime at hand. There are only a couple of brief flashes of nudity, and not much else in the erotic vein.

Another unique factor is the character arcs, especially for Inga. For the first four episodes, she was so surly and unpleasant that I almost gave up on the series. But in the fifth, she sustains a head injury in a fall down some stairs that changes her personality, greatly for the better. Suddenly she’s nicer to everyone; less easily aggravated by bad breaks or disappointments. The change is so dramatic that the rest of the team wonders if she’s OK. Fortunately, that attitude uptick lasts the rest of the way, making those episodes more enjoyable. The level of action also ramps up in the last five, somewhat narrowing the adrenalin gap with our average prime-time counterparts.

I have no idea if there’s a medical basis for that kind of post-traumatic nicening. But if there is, the world would be a far better place if the mechanics of the corrective cranial blows could be reliably duplicated and performed like surgery. Whack the skulls of all the jerks with the right force in the sweet spot for peace and prosperity to flourish. Dare to dream, people! But don’t experiment on the relatives you wish wouldn’t show up for Thanksgiving dinner. You could make them worse; or find your cellmates to be less tolerable than your kinfolk.

(Tatort: Bremen, in German with subtitles, streams on MHzChoice as of 8/13/24)