A strong team: death and love
| Episode in the series A strong team | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Original title | Death and love | ||
 | |||
| Country of production | Germany | ||
| original language | German | ||
| length | 90 minutes | ||
| classification | Episode 69 ( List ) | ||
| First broadcast | February 11, 2017 on ZDF | ||
| Rod | |||
| Director | Martin Kinkel | ||
| script | Timo Berndt | ||
| music | Thomas Osterhoff | ||
| camera | Henning Jessel | ||
| cut | Philipp Schmitt | ||
| occupation | |||
| |||
| chronology | |||
| |||
Death and Love is a German television film by Martin Kinkel from 2017. It is the 69th episode of the crime series A strong team with Florian Martens and Stefanie Stappenbeck in the leading roles. It is Linett Wachow's fifth mission at Otto Garber's side .
action
The car dealer Winfried Born is found dead in a city park. A witness confirms that it was a suicide and that there was no third-party fault. The case starts rolling when the construction lioness Gabriele Wunder is found shot dead in her own villa. The murder weapon is the same as that used in the suicide of Born, a Makarov from GDR times, which at that time was only used by the Stasi as a service weapon. For the “strong team” it looks like a robbery at first, but soon the question arises whether Born was commissioned with killing Wunder and the client is perhaps her own husband. He separated from his wife a few months ago and apparently there is now a valuable picture in his possession, which two days ago stood on the fireplace in his wife's villa. For the investigators, this is a strong motive. When Lars Wunder is interrogated, he admits that although the picture was taken, he had nothing to do with the murder of his wife.
The team continues to investigate in the area around the construction lion and comes across a group of squatters who do not want to be evicted from their flat share . There one speaks of stasi methods, with which the woman tried again and again to have the house cleared in order to be able to convert it. With this remark, the “strong team” actually finds a direct connection between Born and Wunder. While Born worked as an officer in the Stasi, Gabriele Wunder was his superior as a major. A little later, Linett Wachow and Otto Garber find out that Winfried Born did not end his life quite voluntarily. Somebody meticulously staged everything so that the police should think Born was the culprit. The investigators learned about the so-called "dragon death", which the Stasi department had dealt with, through the then secretary of Wunder. It was about psychological manipulation that ultimately drove people to suicide: One last “good deed” to save his own.
After lengthy processing, the KTU can reconstruct a partial fingerprint on one of the cartridges, which leads to private detective Tim Hendriks. The man claims to have got a gun from Frau Wunder because she allegedly felt threatened. Since he has an alibi at the time of the murder of Gabriele Wunder, he is not initially counted among the suspects. But that changes when this alibi bursts. Hendriks considers “the team” to be an external “employee” of Wunder's Stasi department, who at the time tracked down the people wanted by the Stasi in West Berlin and then eliminated them through a staged suicide or accident. Since Hendriks was very young at the time, there could also be a second man with whom he worked. When looking for Hendriks, however, they are too late because he is falling drunk from a skyscraper. Since Garber and Wachow were already nearby, they can find a suspect on the skyscraper. This is the taxi operator Martin Gast, but absolutely nothing can be proven. All evidence has been professionally prepared or has already been destroyed.
While the investigators are meticulously gathering new evidence against Martin Gast, they come across the pawnbroker Sabine Althammer. She states that her guest is a regular customer, because since his wife fell ill with cancer, he needs money again and again, which he can raise by selling individual pieces from his watch collection. She recognized him as a Stasi murderer because one of these watches had once belonged to her husband. The latter had died under the influence of this organization, which Sabine Althammer cannot forgive to this day. Therefore, she put guest under pressure and threatened to bring the truth about him to light to the public and thus also to his wife. He could only prevent this if he judged those who were guilty of that time. So to speak: the rat kills rats because, in their opinion, they all deserve to be killed. Since the campaign of revenge is not over yet, the investigators learn that the department's secretary is also on the "list". In order to save her, the commissioners go to her immediately and can force Gast to retreat in good time. He now feels that he has finally been caught, fled to his wife and administered her a fatal drug. When the police arrive, the woman is already dead, and Gast provokes a suicide by cop .
background
Death and Love was filmed in Berlin and first broadcast on ZDF on February 11, 2017 at 8:15 p.m.
Sputnik , whose role as a businessman in the series is designed as a running gag , opens a nail salon in this episode . However, he is in the hospital because of an accident.
reception
Audience ratings
The first broadcast on February 11, 2017 reached 7.09 million viewers, which corresponds to a market share of 21.6%. In contrast to the previous episode Poisoned , you had to accept losses, which also applied to the young audience: with 1.39 million and a market share of 13.4%, a good result was still achieved.
Reviews
Tilmann P. Gangloff from tittelbach.tv said about this episode: “Even the prelude makes it clear that 'Love and Death' is not a utility series thriller like many others. [...] The case seems to be relatively clear quickly, but then the film amazes with a completely unexpected twist and tells a completely new story. A strong performance by the "Strong Team" (ZDF), not even conspicuously staged, but always exciting and with many surprises. "
At the FAZ , Oliver Junge wrote: “The fact that the film […] does not reach the cruising altitude of better crime novels is mainly due to the fact that the intriguing story is not allowed to find itself at all, but has been squeezed into the narrative framework determined by dreary conventions. Without real ambition, someone on the police station constantly summarizes the investigation status or lectures on the demonic Stasi: master of manipulation . "
Web links
- A strong team: death and love in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Death and love at fernsehserien.de
- Death and love at crew-united.com
Individual evidence
- ↑ Location at filme-schauspieler.de, accessed on November 18, 2017.
- ↑ Primetime check: Saturday, February 11, 2017.quotemeter.de , February 12, 2017, accessed on October 15, 2017 .
- ↑ A strong team - death and love - review of the film. tittelbach.tv , February 11, 2017, accessed October 15, 2017 .
- ↑ Oliver Jungs: A warning is issued against Stasi pensioners at faz.net , accessed on November 18, 2017.