From now on, Katharina Schlothauer and Eugene Boateng will go hunting for criminals in the far north on Thursdays. Why the “Flensburg crime thriller” fits in well with our times.
Flensburg – at the latest since village police officers and LKA investigators have been looking for the murderer in the smallest bugs and on islands, there are hardly any blank spots on Germany’s crime thriller map.
Even Flensburg in the far north is actually already occupied by the ZDF commissioners from the series “Under other circumstances”. Nevertheless, the ARD is relocating its new Thursday thriller here and is able to work out particularities of the region on the border with Denmark particularly well. The first case of the investigative duo Svenja Rasmussen (Katharina Schlothauer) and Antoine Haller (Eugene Boateng) with the title “The Dead on the Beach” runs on November 25th at 8:15 pm in the first.
The body of a Dane was washed up on the Fördestrand near Flensburg. The dead person is Christian Rommedahl, who lived with his wife Grete (Lise Risom Olsen) in a small village near the Danish town of Sønderborg, not far from the border.
Rommedahl’s friend, Lasse Jørgensen (Andreas Grötzinger), with whom he ran a boat workshop, falls into the sights of the two investigators. Another lead leads to the widowed Flensburg liquor dealer Philipp Schaaf (Max von Pufendorf). Because photos of Schaaf’s daughter Lisa are found on the dead person’s cell phone.
The new duo from the “Flensburg-Krimi” is an unequal couple. Haller is a casual guy, not at a loss for any slogan, with a penchant for betting and an aversion to hierarchies. Rasmussen, on the other hand, as his superior of about the same age, appears much cooler without being too distant. She insists on the “you” even though they used to talk at her brother’s birthday party. “But we haven’t worked together yet,” Rasmussen makes clear to the astonished Haller at the first meeting.
According to the scriptwriter Stephan Wuschansky (“SOKO Köln”, “In aller Freundes”), the idea for a diverse investigator duo – a lesbian detective and a black detective – goes back to the fact that he was in the audience a long time ago at a panel discussion about diversity in German TV sat and a black actor described his difficulties in getting roles. “It’s quite the same with queer colleagues,” he says, according to the press kit for the film. “And of course it is true that German television can and must become more diverse, more colorful … It’s fun to be involved.”
In “Der Tote am Strand”, Rasmussen returns to her old home, which she left for Hamburg a few years ago. Here she lives with her partner, a lawyer. In Flensburg, Rasmussen wants to look after her father Morten (Uwe Rohde), the former head of the Flensburg district. He has been suffering from psychosis since Svenja’s brother Lorenz, also a police officer, killed himself.
The issue of racism, with which the black policeman Haller is often confronted, also plays a role. It is important to him to present experiences of racism, says Boateng in an interview with the dpa. But he thinks it’s good that this aspect was only casually addressed in this crime thriller. “I didn’t want a film about racism.”
“Svenja is a very special figure,” says Schlothauer of the dpa. “She has a sixth sense of things and great empathy. She observes and tries to understand instead of judging straight away. ”At the same time, Svenja carries a feeling“ that she has to deal with, a guilt that has to be overcome ”.
The duo is also special, says Schlothauer. “In their idiosyncrasies they complement each other and keep their backs free.” She appreciates his somewhat criminal energy because, like her, he does things differently. What Rasmussen doesn’t like that much is Haller’s very relaxed driving style.
In reality, he doesn’t drive like that, says Boateng, who recently received the German Drama Award for his role in the German-Ghanaian production “Borga”. “I have more of a lead foot.” He is more similar to his figure, as far as the worldview is concerned: “How he searches for justice and wants to make the world a better place, I think it is very similar”.
The investigation is carried out on both sides of the border and Rasmussen naturally also speaks Danish – as so many in the region do in reality. Conversely, many Danes in the border region speak German. A circumstance that Schlothauer, who, like Boateng, was in Flensburg for the first time during the shoot, noticed during the shoot. “I was previously unaware of how bilingual the area is, and it fascinates me,” she says. “I like how borders and nationalities flow and blur into one another, and it’s an important memory.” Dpa
