For many Germans it is a ritual: on Sunday evening Tatort look. Promptly at a quarter past eight, after the news, the German public channel ARD broadcasts a new one under that name every week krimi from.
Today it is exactly 50 years ago that the first episode of the detective was shown. Millions of people are still watching, whether at home on the couch or all together in the pub.
And so tonight at 8:15 p.m. this tune was heard again in millions of homes, which has never changed since 1970:
The formula of Tatort has hardly changed in all those years. Each region has its own commissioner or police team, so that every week the viewer follows a murder case in a different part of Germany, Austria and, recently, Switzerland again. Under the permanent name Tatort So different stories, people and themes are central every week.
In the Netherlands Tatort from the 1980s to the beginning of this century on TV. Commissioner Horst Schimanski from Duisburg was particularly popular. He was a completely different type from the detective the public had known until then: not a wise old man in a suit, but a rude-faced guy in a dirty jacket.
With a link to the Netherlands, moreover, because his loyal assistant Hänschen was played by actor and screenwriter Chiem van Houweninge. In Germany they have still not forgotten Hänschen, says Van Houweninge: “When I am somewhere in Germany in a busy place, I first have to hand out a pile of signatures. People still immediately think of Hänschen and Schimanski.”
Van Houweninge’s Dutch accent (with beard) was always clearly audible:
Van Houweninge took part in 36 episodes around the figure Schimanski, and wrote six. The power of Tatort according to him lies among other things in the current problems that are central. “In the years that I co-wrote, we started to incorporate problems that were happening in Germany into the story. From illegal adoption to environmental pollution, and a few years ago an episode about loverboys.”
This fan and extra skipped almost no episode and even had an extra role in the series 30 times:
Media scientist Sebastian Scholz, affiliated with the VU University in Amsterdam, agrees with Van Houweninge: “Who Tatort looks at the history of Germany. In the series you can see what has been going on in Germany for the past fifty years. But you also hear how people talk and see what they are wearing. And how that differs from region to region, because every week a murder case is solved elsewhere. “
Moreover, says Scholz, the series is always trying to renew. “Schimanski was an example of this in the 1980s. We did not know such a raw policeman from the Ruhr area at all. We see a similar change in style today in the Tatort team from Hesse. The cases they solve are Tarantino. -like, with bizarre plot twists and sometimes many deaths. “
Anniversary broadcast
The 50th anniversary will be celebrated tonight with the first of two episodes, in which the Tatortteams from Dortmund and Munich work together. This time it is about murder and fraud, and the long arm of the southern Italian mafia.
For those who want: the broadcast starts at 8.15 pm on the public channel ARD.