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Julia Jetsch and Nicholas Ofczarek in "The Passport": Evil in the Eye
Photo: Hendrik Heiden / Sky
There are series that can be continued indefinitely without being damaged.
After all, the element of repetition is in the nature of serial storytelling, so why end, for example, Our Sandman, which has been in stride in production since 1959 and has now clocked in at over 20,000 episodes?
Other series have a much shorter, but all the more intense life.
The thriller series »Der Pass« from Sky, for example, deserved the silence after the shot with which it ended after eight fabulously abysmal episodes.
But the mechanisms in the television business work differently, it's about subscription numbers and keeping viewers on board.
Success can become a curse, the show must go on.
That's why the sequel knocks on the door like an uninvited guest and waters down a noble substance to a muddy mush.
Not that the first season was particularly original in and of itself.
On the contrary, when it started three years ago, television routine seemed pre-programmed, after all it was the umpteenth remake of the successful Danish-Swedish crime series »The Bridge«.
At most, the cast with Julia Jentsch and Nicholas Ofczarek made people sit up and take notice.
But »The Pass« turned out to be a sophisticated variant of »Seven« in series form, a night-black, radical thriller parable on human depravity that managed to keep the suspense for hours and still surprised and disturbed in the last 15 minutes.
Now, in the second season, a serial killer is on the loose again in the alpine border area between Germany and Austria.
This time he only assassinates women.
And the morbid atmosphere of the first part is immediately present again in the dimmed down images of gurgling waterfalls, dark fir trees and dead staring stuffed deer heads on the walls of a cold castle.
»The Passport 2« is not a complete flop like the second seasons of »Top of the Lake« or »True Detective«, well-known examples of celebrated series with a questionable sequel.
The first two episodes promise an even more radical narrative structure than the first season: now it's not only clear after the third but after the first episode who the killer is.
The fable of Schiach, a legendary figure who roams the woods alone and plays a role here, as well as the visual tableau open up dreams of fear that one would rather not enter.
A simple long shot of snow-covered mountain slopes resonates with anxiety, loneliness and the experience of suffering that goes far beyond the pictures.
Laboring on the adversities of life
The investigators Stocker (Jentsch) and Winter (Ofczarek) find each other again via detours, the German commissioner traumatized by the experiences of season one, the Austrian officer off duty and handicapped because of a bullet in the head.
Two struggling with the adversities of life, driven by the fear of being late again and being guilty of the death of the next victim.
Of course they are late again.
But is that enough for another eight episodes and over six hours of material? Definitely no. From the third episode at the latest, it becomes clear that the story is on the point that an existing shell with atmosphere is just pasted over here. The mere fact that the two drawn main characters meet a serial killer again, which seems constructed, is so difficult for season two that it never gets anywhere. Especially since the resolution of the case is dragging on with less and less tension this time.
But the highlight of the predecessor was precisely that he only used the hunt for a murderer as a backdrop for a psychogram of two police officers, the likes of which had never been seen on German television with such intensity. Both went through a poignant development in their own way, he from a melancholy drunkard with connections to the underworld to a dedicated investigator, she from a dedicated investigator with motivational speech about a series of humiliations to the victim of a ruthless police force and finally a sociopath with a sense of mission.
Stocker and Winter were two characters of literary depth and emotional authenticity, played by two stage actors with an almost painful presence.
The second season turns them into two characters in an expanding series universe, evolving only to keep that universe going.
Nothing about it is credible anymore, certainly not touching.
In the end there are even hints that there could be a third season because Winter urgently needs to deal with the demons of his childhood.
Oh, one wishes he could go into early retirement.