Greed for money, love and jealousy or competition? This time the team around “Marie Brand” has to deal with a whole bunch of possible perpetrators with a wide variety of motives.
Cologne – This time, Commissioner Jürgen Simmel does not have to hand his jacket into the hands of his colleague Marie Brand in order to pursue a fugitive.
Instead, he gets on his racing bike and takes on a women’s team on the track. Two laps, of which he can still feel something on the following days when climbing stairs. He had previously blasphemed that the athletes only lead in circles.
The fact that the duo determined in the ZDF crime thriller “Marie Brand and the dead man in the jersey” (on Wednesday at 8:15 pm) at the cycling track is due to the skeleton in the ground under the system. The bones are marked by animal bite marks, a ring has remained on the finger. Even if the victim only died two years ago, there isn’t much left of the remains. An anonymous tip had drawn the police’s attention to the unconventional grave.
The dead man is the formerly successful cyclist Stefan Lührs, who was facing a great career – from which many wanted to benefit. His stepfather and twin brother wanted to start a cycling business with the name. They thought the missing person was supposedly on a trip around the world and yet they are not very surprised by the news. “Maybe the news of death isn’t that shock,” speculated investigator Brand.
A doctor is also involved, as is a young woman who once adored Lührs and created a fan page on the Internet. But the investigators also have to check what doping rumors are all about. What role does the former competitor play, who after a serious accident cannot climb a bike for the rest of his life? And what secret is the trainer hiding? He first reveals to the two inspectors: “Above all, Stefan wanted to get away from his old man.”
The audience also has to rummage through this thicket of possible suspects. Even if many alibis quickly prove to be watertight. The investigation is staged in the cold, windy autumn of Cologne. Many scenes are held in a matt blue-gray. Even in the police station, light only sporadically comes in thanks to the blinds.
In forensic medicine, which is also gloomy, someone else hooded steals the ring. “One ring less, a bit more,” comments Brand. “That sounds poetic,” replies Simmel.
Since 2008, the ZDF has been sending the highly talented, logically working investigator Brand (Mariele Millowitsch) and her much more impulsive, sometimes somewhat inexperienced colleague Simmel (Hinnerk Schönemann) to work at irregular intervals. The first broadcasts of the crime series have been on Wednesdays or Saturdays at prime time since 2014. For the Mainz broadcaster, it is a quota guarantee with several million viewers per episode and market shares of sometimes more than a fifth.
In the new case, the mixed situation breaks up piece by piece. So there is time for interpersonal and small skirmishes: Simmel shows slight jealousy because of the forensic doctor. Brand, in turn, sniffs out a change in her colleague: “New deodorant?” She asks. “Yes, I’ll try something,” he replies. She counters dryly: “There is still room for improvement.” Dpa
