Commissioners in the monastery in the nice, but by no means too nice Munich crime scene “Miracles always happen”.
It’s midsummer in this Christmas town from Bavaria – yes, that goes well together here. Strolling tourists hold up the inspectors (“stop, don’t sleep!”), The bright yellow walls of a monastery glow between lush green meadows, assistant Kalli does his research from a wonderful bathing lake. He just has to dry his fingers a little quickly before he can answer the phone. And be careful not to let your hair drip into the laptop.
A man died who was in the monastery just before – because of the stop and hiking in the beautiful landscape, say the nuns. Hm, think the commissioners and look skeptical. Because the dead man was also the auditor of the Archdiocese of Munich. And it is not the case (as has long been known) that the business of the Church is above suspicion. So Batic and Leitmayr stay with the nuns in the “Monastery of the Holy Cross”. Its role in the BR crime scene “Miracles are always there” is played with dignity by the Reisach monastery. It has been empty since the last religious, Discalced Carmelites, who lived there, were withdrawn to Poland in 2019. (There is a “monastery rescuer” initiative for resuscitation and use, but only incidentally.)
In addition to the dying of the auditor in one go, which, thanks to the pathologist, was not long puzzling, the death of the monastery also plays a role – and maybe that has a connection? Because only seven nuns still live in the monastery of the Holy Cross (the investigators count six, strange), but anything under ten is a problem. “The church is not free from economic interests either,” explains Sister Barbara, Corinna Harfouch. Sister Angela, Ulrike Willenbacher, may still have a knack for stocks. Thanks to the hard work and resourcefulness of Sister Klara, Jacoba, Julia and Antonia (Constanze Becker, Petra Hartung, Christiane Blumhoff and Maresi Riegner) online trading in monastery products may still be buzzing.
Shrewd nuns, anything but unworldly, you can usually find them in comedies. But Alex Buresch and Matthias Pracht, script, and Maris Pfeiffer, director, don’t let the joke go entirely – inspectors who climb a ladder so that they can receive reception – they set the sobriety, almost serenity of the Munich duo, Miroslav Nemec and Udo Wachtveitl, once again to a good profit. There is also a small pinch of “The Name of the Rose”: long, dark cellar corridors, bad dreams after enjoying herbal tea, hemlock (!) In the monastery garden, cats screaming night after night. A caretaker who was in jail and as an alibi claims to have visited “the Mizzi in Chez Luis”.
There is also a nice pinch of mafia crime, because the two dubious emissaries from the Vatican, who also unload mysterious boxes, what do they want in the Monastery of the Holy Cross? “Internal church affairs”, that can hardly satisfy the commissioners. Finally, there is a veritable country-house thriller ending, in which the two investigators call all suspects together to announce the resolution. “There are always miracles” is on the one hand not very nerve-wracking, on the other hand it takes its protagonists seriously in a beautiful way.
“Tatort: Miracles always happen”, ARD, Sun., 8:15 pm.
