“The dead from Lake Constance: The second face” (ZDF) – Kassandra must bear grief

The 14th case of the German-Austrian team of investigators from “Die Toten vom Bodensee” combines entertainment quality and profound moments. The TV review.

Frankfurt – The ZDF crime series “Die Toten vom Bodensee”, which is staged once or twice, recently three times a year, has special characteristics. One of these characteristics is that the authors involved take up customs, traditions and myths and weave them into the respective criminal act.

In the current episode, it’s a nature spirit festival, a kind of carnival parade in which those involved wear creepy masks and dance through the streets. A young woman by the name of Lisa Schwegelin (Anna Herrmann) claims to have seen a masked man stab another man in the turmoil. She reports the crime of the “German-Austrian fight against crime” and ends up with the main characters in the row: the German chief detective Micha Oberländer (Matthias Koeberlin) and the Austrian criminal inspector Hannah Zeiler (Nora Waldstätten). Professionally, the two always appear as a duo, while detective chief inspector Thomas Komlatschek (Hary Prinz) has to do a bit of a lackeys, but nonetheless accomplished work. Incidentally, a representation of secondary importance that some real police officers do not even like to see.

Death between dancing grimaces on the ZDF series “Die Toten vom Bodensee”

But now the ad of the young woman Schwegelin has a catch: the ghost dance has not yet taken place. A sibyl? Or rather Kassandra? Can she see into the future or does her fantasy run away? Oberländer shrugs off the statement.

But Zeiler takes in the scent. You had Lisa Schwegelin make a phantom of the alleged victim. And the witty Zeiler actually finds a person who looks like the drawing. She mingles with the celebrants, follows the wife of the man threatened with death, loses her between the dancing grimaces.

And comes too late. The murder takes place as prophesied.

The dead from Lake Constance (ZDF): drug-induced murder prophecies?

Now it is switched to ratio. How was the now very distraught young woman able to foresee the murder in such detail? Actually only with perpetrator knowledge.

You can’t prove anything to her. She lives in strange circumstances, alone with her brother Marco on an alpaca farm. Marco Schweglin (Christoph Luser) states that his sister suffers from epilepsy and is taking heavy medication. Do the predictions belong to the risks and side effects? Probably not …

And then she comes back with a story like that. Again the police are late. But then does a very good job and discovers a connection between the victims, which at first glance actually have nothing to do with each other. From then on, the plot continues to develop in a surprising and twisting manner and becomes increasingly deep.

In love and convicted of the ZDF series “The Dead from Lake Constance”

Another special feature of the series “Die Toten vom Bodensee” is that the private background stories are told coherently and logically. In the past there was growing alienation between Oberländer and his then wife (Inez Bjørg David), with whom he has a child. The child is still there and appears occasionally.

Oberländer currently has a new partner, also an old acquaintance: Miriam Thaler (Martina Ebm), who had previously attracted his extra-professional attention, but was then, albeit reluctantly, put behind bars. Now she has atoned, and apparently also purified herself, and the two are a couple.

The colleague Zeiler observes it with a certain suspicion, while she in turn begins to work on breaking down the connection to her actually lovable neighbor Raphael Stadler (Christopher Schärf). So the suspicion of jealousy blows through offices and private motorcycle workshops.

“Die Toten vom Bodensee” (ZDF): The love of motorcycles

“The second face” was written by Jeanet Pfitzer, Frank Koopmann and Roland Heep, who wrote for the series for the first time. The trio of authors and director Christian Theede succeeded in one episode well above their average, with an intelligently designed script, even in the secondary strands, many sophisticated lines of dialogue and a wealth of ideas. One of them: Zeiler’s work on her motorcycle as an allegory of her love life. As if Robert M. Pirsig’s “romantic quality” from his philosophical bestseller “Zen and the Art of Maintaining a Motorcycle” had been the inspiration.

On the edge: The film offers the ex-Bond villain and Götz Otto, who is still in international demand, the opportunity not to be the villain for once. (Harald Keller)

Do you want more crime fiction? In the “Tatort: Greed and Fear” from Dortmund, the plight of the rich is brought to the point – the TV criticism.