"A strong team: Die on probation": Crime on ZDF meets expectations

The first half of this crime thriller from the classic series with Florian Martens babbles calmly, but in the second the story hits one hook after the other.

Frankfurt am Main – Football fans know that a game can have two different halves: In the first 45 minutes it ripples uneventfully, in the second half one of the two teams accelerates so much that sports reporters like to speculate whether a special one Break tea or a loud coach speech would have caused the change.

TV films usually also last ninety minutes, but of course there is no break, which is why the question is unnecessary whether director Johannes Grieser has changed tactics in the middle of “A strong team: Die on probation” (ZDF), especially since filming is as good as never run chronologically. The difference between the two halves of the film is striking, however: the first 45 minutes stretch like chewed gum, but then the plot catches so many hooks that the first half seems like an overly long warm-up program.

“A strong team: Die on probation” (ZDF): A ZDF classic

The 85th episode of the ZDF classic “A strong team” begins with the obligatory death: an entrepreneur has called his relatives together to talk to them about his will. After putting the last hand to the last will, he collapses dead. Everything points to a heart attack, but the emergency doctor doesn’t feel at ease. In fact, the old man did not die of natural causes: someone overdosed on his blood pressure drug and made the will disappear. Only one family member is considered to be the perpetrator: the wife (Leslie Malton), the stepdaughter (Lisa Marie Janke) or one of the two sons.

“A strong team: Die on probation” (ZDF): Production corresponds to TV standards

Stories like this have probably already been told hundreds, if not thousands, of times in one of the countless crime series and series; The staging also corresponds to the commercial TV standard. The suspicions soon focus on the adult children: The older son (Jan Krauter) is angry that his father has not given him, but his half-sister, the management of the family’s large haulage company; the will might have confirmed this personality. But perhaps the old man also wanted to reverse the regulation; that would burden the daughter.

“A strong team: Die on probation” (ZDF): There is no tension

The younger son (Theo Trebs) is a drug addict, has a lot of debts and desperately needs money. He was also rejected by his father. Up to this point, the story follows the tried and tested motto “If you have a family like this, you don’t need enemies.” Tension does not arise for a moment, everything seems very routine. At most, the question of who the young man (Junis Marlon) is who hides in front of the Paulsen family and disappears after the patriarch’s death creates a certain curiosity.

The last episodes that Grieser shot for “A strong team” were also far from being a thrill, but at least not a waste of time. In addition, the script comes from Jürgen Pomorin, who as Leo P. Ard is a certain guarantee for good crime entertainment. The ZDF film then fulfills this promise in the second half, when the two women also take center stage. The comparison to football comes to mind again, because new forces bring a lot of movement into the supposedly manageable family image: old Paulsen, who humiliated his wife for decades because of an affair with his former partner, was also not a child of sadness.

Anyone who has not long since said goodbye to “A strong team: Die on probation” (ZDF) after 45 minutes will be compensated by the many capers of the plot, especially since the slightly jazzed music (Jens Langbein, Robert Schulte Hemming) is very worth listening to. In terms of performance, the film, with its not exactly exciting cast, is on an average crime level. Some private dialogue scenes in which Otto Garber and Linett Wachow talk about their last will are quite likeable, but otherwise Florian Martens and Stefanie Stappenbeck seem underchallenged.

As a colleague Klöckner, Matthi Faust has at least one or the other cool appearance. The comedy level is also halfway amusing: the team goes on a company outing to a betting office, where team boss Reddemann (Arnfried Lerche) gets a taste for it and promptly becomes a gambler. By far the most interesting role in the story, however, is played by Gerd Silberbauer as a homeless man who gives the young man an insight: life is not a movie with a happy ending guarantee; a wisdom with which he is completely wrong in his own case in a surprising way. (Tilmann P. Gangloff)