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Anne-Marie Fliegel (standing) as Patriarch Elisabeth Klingler: In the circle of the dark chocolate cherry family
Photo: Benoît Linder / SWR
This is a "crime scene" from the corporate crime category.
The formula for this has existed for as long as there have been TV thrillers à la »Derrick« or the »Tatort« and goes like this: screw manufacturer, furniture store or financial service dynasty is grappling with the unexplained violent death of the head of the family in a wood-paneled family villa hell Heritage.
In the case of the Freiburg »Tatort«, it is a dynasty of Black Forest chocolate cherry manufacturers - ancient West German entrepreneurship that speaks and acts as the ancient West German television crime tradition dictates: One whispers in the precious wood ambience about the large conference table in little subtle way poisoned amiability while the notary lectures on questions of inheritance law and declarations of waiver of compulsory portion.
The floorboards creak, the dialogues creak.
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Tobler (Eva Löbau, M.) and Berg (Hans-Jochen Wagner) with suspicious daughter of the dead (Jenny Schily): woodcut plot in a wood-chic ambience
Photo: Benoît Linder / SWR
The thriller begins light-footedly: two old ladies say yes with a blissful smile on their lips, the registrar declares them to be lawful spouses.
One of the two is the patriarch of the chocolate cherry dynasty, the other her companion of Russian descent.
But no sooner have the two told the family the news and the testamentary consequences associated with it, than the old patriarch lies unconscious in the hallway after a suspicious fall from the stairs and later dies in the hospital to dramatic piano music.
Pros and cons of inheritance law
In the following, Franziska Tobler (Eva Löbau) and Friedemann Berg (Hans-Jochen Wagner) curve back and forth between the very unsympathetic family members while they argue endlessly behind the windshield about the philosophical and political implications of inheritance law.
And while they are curling around and philosophizing, the solution to the case seems to lead to a dark chapter of the dark chocolate cherry family: The company employed Russian slave laborers during the Nazi era, the current violent crime seems to be somehow connected with it.
The fact that every turn of the plot in this crime thriller sounds familiar and every character is immediately transparent may also be due to the fact that one still has two "crime scene" episodes in memory, for which extremely surprising cases were built from similar material. For example, the inheritance law story in the Swiss chocolate factory »Tatort« was shot adventurously in a bizarre reproductive medicine context in February, while in the first case of the new Saar team last year, the slave labor issue was much more profound and disturbing.
The colleagues from Saarland actually managed to flash 80 years of German history in the present, despite all the actors' attempts to cover up.
In the Black Forest episode "What we inherit" (book: Patrick Brunken, director: Franziska Schlotterer) this long breath of history is unfortunately not felt.
Short of breath, the woodcut plot drags itself into a wood-chic ambience, only to open up in the end as one would have anticipated from halfway through.
A thriller as thrilling as a meeting at the notary.
Rating:
2 out of 10 points
"Scene of the crime: What we inherit",
Sunday, 8:15 pm, Das Erste
