Today on ZDF: "Colleagues: The bad child" – is the new crime series worth it?

ZDF starts a new crime series with Caroline Peters and Natalia Belitski: A balance between crime stories and complicated relationships.

Frankfurt – Do you have to worry about ZDF chief commissioner Irene Gaup? A girl found Gaup’s lavishly stuffed handbag on a playground in Dahlem and politely spoke up on her behalf when the State Criminal Police Office called. The colleagues go in search.

The mysterious disappearance in “Colleagues: The Bad Child” (ZDF) has a lead time of one week. So flashback. Actually, it should be a nice day. It’s a colleague’s birthday. Irene Gaup (Caroline Peters) brings home-made cakes. Not just a topped ready-made cake base, but a real work of art. Should she ever have enough of investigative work, the path to becoming a confectioner is certainly open to her.

New crime series on ZDF: “Colleagues: The Bad Child” – Commissioner mocked by fate

But the cake has to wait, because Gaup is called to a corpse site in the ZDF crime thriller. It’s far out in the countryside on Berlin’s border with Brandenburg. Already there is Julia Jungklausen (Natalia Belitski), who has just come from Leipzig to the Berlin office and, through a whimsical whim of mocking fate, the new partner Irene Gaups. The first encounter takes place at the alleged crime scene, very warmly on the part of Gaup, while her counterpart appears almost insultingly cool.

Because Jungklausen has come to a realization that Irene Gaup is yet to come: Jungklausen’s yoga buddy and partner Hans Gaup (Götz Schubert) is Irene’s estranged husband. And on top of that the public prosecutor, for whom they both have to work and who, by the way, is still very attached to Irene’s baked goods.

ZDF: Caroline Peters offers more in “Colleagues: The Bad Child”.

In “Colleagues: The Bad Child” it is necessary to clarify the murder of an 18-year-old. The investigation leads to the farm of a group of dropouts who have renounced capitalism, are self-sufficient and have a tipi outside in the meadow where the in-house shaman Keanu (Marek Harloff) lives. A sage for whom Irene Gaup will develop a special interest.

These scenes could easily have descended into silliness, but director Vanessa Jopp is careful not to ridicule these characters. They know how to stand up to any mockery. It also doesn’t hurt that farmer Gudrun Enzensberger (Karoline Eichhorn) used to be a lawyer. With a reputation that almost makes the investigators stand to attention when they see the connections.

Today on ZDF: “Colleagues: The Bad Child” – you have to pull yourself together

The “colleagues” have to pull themselves together, because from now on they should investigate in series. Author Anette Simon lets the figure of Irene Gaup particularly stand out for the ‘Inauguration’. The ongoing separation from her husband hits her harder than she wants to admit and those around her want to know. And then it turns out that the current murder case is connected to the disappearance of a thirteen-year-old four years ago, and that Irene Gaup is still monolithically heavy on the soul. Caroline Peters, who was the face of the hit series “Murder with a View” for six years – or six long years – has more to offer than just stalking through a fictitious Eifel village with big eyes.

The two main characters of the ZDF thriller have been worked through thoroughly. One engaging and compassionate, the other cool, almost a little autistic, with a few quirks. But there is still a lot to discover with both of them. On the other hand, the secondary characters, including the guy who switches from one to the other, through whom the constellation of characters is expanded into a triangle, remain pale – although they are also convincingly implemented in terms of acting.

ZDF: “Colleagues: The Bad Child” – the cast of the new crime series in the second

Coarse cutlery: ZDF starts new crime series “Colleagues: The Bad Child”

Due to the complex private life of the trio, the crime story falls behind noticeably. Sometimes rougher tools are used in order to put the clerks on the right track and find a solution to the matter. From a genre point of view, not an all-round successful production despite many strengths.

A strange fact, so much transparency may be, has it with the press material for “Colleagues: The Bad Child”. The main character is called “Inrene” and you read screwed up sentences like “Two women who not only differ in their lived life, but also in their life plans (…).” Ugly Anglicisms like “reinvent themselves” – comes right after in the Dusseldeutschlexikon “self-titled” – are almost not worth mentioning anymore. (Harold Keller)

In addition to the new series, entertaining abysses have also recently opened up in well-known areas on the second German television: digital crime has made its way into the ZDF crime thriller “Friesland: Unter der Optik”.