This time, in terms of personnel, everything remains the same in the “Soko Köln” team. But in the first case of the new season, the boss is overtaken by her past. At first she seems to like that.
Cologne – “I killed someone,” confides Enno Schmidt in a retro jogging suit to the inspector. Whom? He don’t know. Where is the corpse? Neither. Except that the dead man was disguised as a pig.
As absurd as the new case for “Soko Köln” starts on Tuesday (September 21st) at its traditional slot at 6 p.m. on ZDF, the first episode of the 18th season continues as bizarre. Enno Schmidt is the offspring of a crook family, well known by the police. Even if the reports say they have a lot on the kerbholz, their coups seem to be more of a fortuitous stroke of luck – that’s how clumsy they act.
For example, father Henry tells the policeman nothing to me, nothing to you, he is currently working on a “clever plan for clearing out the cathedral treasury”. They used to earn their extra income with taxis. “We are now making e-scooters,” Enno explains to the officials. “You get money for others to drive yourself.”
He looks clumsy. He explains that he went jogging between 5:00 and 6:00 in the morning with the words: “In these hours it is decided who is successful in life.” That morning he probably did not – he claims to have committed the murder. “I’ve never killed anyone,” he says with the flag. “The alcohol gave me the courage to put myself on the same level.” The investigator just doesn’t want to believe him.
Until the water police pulls a corpse out of the Rhine: in a pig costume. “The poor pig,” commented one inspector dryly. Cologne humor? Or humor from “Soko Köln”?
The investigation leads Helena Jung’s team to a Dutchman’s wholesale market. His daughter should have married that day. But the groom did not appear: he is the dead man in disguise. A fool, as the father says. And it goes on grotesquely. When asked whether he can give the police information, he answers pain-free: “Yes, I have time now.”
Soko Köln has been on ZDF since 2003. It is the third offshoot of the “Soko” series. Sonja Baum, Jung’s team leader, has been with us for a year. “I have now more than settled in,” says Baum, according to the press release. The regular line-up with Matti Wagner (Pierre Besson), Jonas Fischer (Lukas Piloty), Vanessa Haas (Kerstin Landsmann), Lilly Funke (Tatjana Kästel) and forensic doctor Philip Kraft (Thomas Clemens) remains the well-known in the new season.
According to the Mainz broadcaster, 20 episodes deal with extortion, a murdered cardiac surgeon and an “assessment center” in which the candidates for a high position in the economy try to boot each other out. In the episode “Beaten Women”, Helena is personally very involved, reveals actress Blum. And after ten years she meets her great love Cem (Renato Schuch) again – already in the first episode “Enno was it”.
Director Janis Rebecca Rattenni staged it in a summery color scheme. Some scenes are reminiscent of slightly faded vacation photos. However, the book by Mira Roth and Thomas Frydetzki sets the pace. The deceased died during his bachelorette party, it turns out. The participants: employees of the company, paid by the father-in-law. Cause of death: hallucinogens that were in the liquid of his e-cigarette. But the deceased was not a saint, and his love was not exclusive, as it turns out.
Helena’s rediscovered love doesn’t seem to be free of conflict either. It is true that the chief detective in episode one of the new season still looks badly missed. But actress Blum indicates for the course of the season: “Helena is in love, confused, is in a conflict between private and professional intentions.” Dpa
