The Quartet: The Long Shadow of Death

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Episode of the series The Quartet
Original title The long shadow of death
Country of production Germany
original language German
Production
company		 Akzente Film & TV production
on behalf of ZDF
length 89 minutes
classification Episode 1 ( list )
German-language
first broadcast		 October 12, 2019 on ZDF
Rod
Director Vivian Naefe
script Friedrich Ani ,
Ina Jung
production Susanne Freyer
music Martin Probst
camera Peter Döttling
cut Georg Soering
occupation

The Long Shadow of Death is a German crime film by Vivian Naefe from 2019 and the first episode of the ZDF crime series Das Quartett . The premiere took place on September 18th at the crime festival Tatort Eifel .

action

The first case of Maike Riem and her team from the K14 of the Leipzig homicide squad leads them to the Leipzig Elster basin , where the corpse of the former large-scale bakery operator Franko Bleich is found. The man was strangled and a belt is a possible tool. A handkerchief found at the crime scene and a black SUV that was seen by a witness on the other bank are the only clues to the suspected perpetrator so far.

Bleich's wife Paula, his partner Esther and the deceased's neighborhood, Bleich, are suspected of child abuse . The fact that Bleich liked children, invited them into his house and watched them play gives rise to this suspicion. According to Esther Korff, the victim's partner, he only did so out of a sense of guilt. Three years ago he ran over a neighbor's child during a failed parking maneuver. Although he was acquitted by the court, he still felt guilty and wanted to do good for other children. A pedophile tendency would in no way have prevailed. So Jana Grimm, the mother of the injured girl, has to be counted among the suspects. The woman still seems traumatized and removed from reality, but at the time of the crime she has an alibi because she was in a clinic on the day of the crime.

After evaluating the traces, the DNA of Rolf Torberg, one of the victim's neighbors, is found on Bleich's body. During the questioning, he admits that he and his neighbor Niklas Reger regularly observed Bleich in order to be able to intervene if he should have wanted to harm the children. Small fists would have happened before. But they had nothing to do with his death. A careful questioning of the "affected" children confirms the statement made by Bleich's partner. The girls would just have fun with their nice neighbor, who even had a small pool in which they could swim. He would have baked them cakes too.

During the search of Bleich's apartment, Maike Riem found all the photos of his wife in a garbage bag, threatening letters from the worried neighbors, but also a letter from Jana Grimm in which she allegedly asked him repeatedly to apologize to her. Paula Bleich confirms to Riem that Grimm had become a real stalker and had written such letters over the years. She really wanted an apology from her husband and in her eyes the woman would be crazy. The investigators take a closer look at Jana Grimm and now find out that Bastian Koch, the friend and father of their injured daughter , drives a dark SUV . He is interviewed together with his wife and admits to having met with Bleich on the evening of the crime. He couldn't bear it anymore that his wife had been living in her own world for three years and had rejected him since his daughter's death and simply didn't want to have anything more to do with him. He wanted his wife back and had therefore approached Bleich himself to get him to admit his guilt so that she could finally find her peace. Unfortunately, that then escalated.

Production notes

The shooting for The Long Shadow of Death extended from November 13, 2018 to December 13, 2018 and took place at locations in Berlin and Leipzig .

Leading actress Anja Kling moved from Dresden to Leipzig for Das Quartett , because before that, Kling took on the role of Chief Detective Bärbel Wallenstein for two episodes, she and her daughter Kim Tilly, played by Lisa Tomaschewsky , formed a forensic mother-daughter team. After the second episode with a new broadcast title, the series was discontinued in the summer of 2016 due to bad reviews and a below-expected audience rating of 4.96 million viewers.

reception

Audience ratings

The first broadcast on October 12, 2019 on ZDF was followed by 5.77 million viewers, which corresponds to a market share of 19.8%. Of the younger audience, 7 percent opted for the film The Long Shadow of Death .

criticism

Rainer Tittelbach from Tittelbach.tv said: “Introducing such a team and telling an exciting crime thriller at the same time is a Herculean task that authors regularly failed to do years ago. Today it usually works better, with 'The Long Shadow of Death' even really well. ”“ There are clear script settings that you have to put up with as a viewer: personal peculiarities, psychological dispositions, constant smoking of the inspectors in the office , a great affinity for technology, the friendly atmosphere ... But at some point at half time a point is reached at which the whodunit thriller, which is remarkably well and idiosyncratically played, grabs you more and more. "

The morgenpost.de wrote: "The debut of the investigators is quite honest therefore." "More than determine which can also be the new quartet 'certainly not. To compensate for this, however, the two scriptwriters Friedrich Ani and Ina Jung have come up with some ideas with regard to the characters of the officers. "

Heike Hupertz from faz.net judged: “The effort to keep the tone and the coherence of the conversations, the renouncement of explanatory flashbacks, the casualness with which the blobs of biographies and idiosyncrasies of the main characters are brought into play, all of this certainly looks as if one has made some effort in advance to avoid truism. "" You can count 'Das Quartett' among the more respectable crime series new starts, some of which are as superfluous as the hundred thousandth death in the main television program. "

Martin Seng evaluated forquotemeter.de and found: “'The Quartet' definitely has the potential to develop into a good crime series. However, the finishing touches are currently missing, which both the script and the intensity lack. But the premise of the team of four is promising and can be expanded to more in further cases. So far, the new ZDF crime series has been sailing in shallow waters and cannot yet prove to be consistently good entertainment. "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Fimpremiere "The Quartet" - The long shadow of death. Retrieved October 13, 2019 .
  2. ^ ZDF Saturday thriller with Anja Kling: Start of shooting for "Das Quartett". In: presseportal.de . Retrieved November 15, 2018 .
  3. ^ The Quartet - The Long Shadow of Death at crew united
  4. ↑ Manuel Weis: ZDF puts an end to "Dresden Mord" In : quotemeter.de from February 14, 2018. Retrieved on October 13, 2019.
  5. ↑ Primetime check: Saturday, October 12, 2019. October 13, 2019, accessed on October 13, 2019 (German).
  6. ^ Rainer Tittelbach : The Quartet - The Long Shadow of Death - Review of the film at Tittelbach.tv. Retrieved October 13, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Berliner Morgenpost- Berlin: “The Quartet” solves the first case - the start is not very inspiring. October 12, 2019, accessed on October 13, 2019 (German).
  8. ↑ Heike Hupertz: Heike Hupertz: crime series “Das Quartett”: individual combat is out . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed October 13, 2019]).
  9. ↑ Martin Seng: movie review at Quotenmeter.de , accessed on February 24 2020th