Crime scene: never without me

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Episode of the series Tatort
Original title Never without me
Country of production Germany
original language German
Production
company		 WDR
classification Episode 1125 ( List )
First broadcast March 22nd, 2020 on Das Erste
Rod
Director Nina Wolfrum
script Jürgen Werner
production Jan Kruse
music Olaf Didolff
camera Peter Nix
cut Anne-Kathrein Thiele
occupation

A television film from the crime series Tatort is never without me . The report produced by WDR was broadcast on March 22nd, 2020 on Das Erste . In this 1125th crime scene episode, the Cologne commissioners Ballauf and Schenk determine their 78th case.

action

Monika Fellner, an employee of the Cologne youth welfare office and known within the authorities for her very tough line in collecting maintenance payments from divorced parents, is found dead one night not far from her apartment. Ballauf and Schenk investigate and get caught in the turmoil of several families who are clients of the youth welfare office.

Rainer Hildebrandt was betrayed by his wife Katja and their boss. She lives in her new partner's villa and is officially registered as unemployed so that she does not have to pay maintenance for the two children they share. Rainer has been fired and is fighting for the last thing he has left in life: custody of his children. Based on a cell phone video recorded by the murdered Fellner, in which he threatened Fellner and a testimony that their paths crossed on the night of the crime, Rainer Hildebrandt becomes a prime suspect for the crime. He himself claims that he only went to Fellner to apologize to her.

Ballauf and Schenk also target roofer Stefan Krömer, who is the father of a daughter of elementary school age, and whose mother Julia Beck - who has found herself in a low-paid mail-order job since the separation and raises the daughter alone - refuses to pay maintenance. He is also officially unemployed, but works as a roofer and shows off a luxurious lifestyle on social media. He too had a clash with Fellner shortly before Fellner's death and has no alibi for the time of the crime.

The investigations are made even more difficult because the official Ingrid Kugelmaier leads Ballauf and Schenk's assistant Jütte astray several times during his file investigations. Unlike Fellner, Kugelmaier has granted grants for families several times, contrary to official rules. In her fear of being exposed, she turns to the head of the office, Markus Breitenbach, who outwardly leads a life as a model father, but is increasingly nervous.

A turning point was given to the case, which had not brought any tangible traces to the two investigators until then, when the young single mother Tülay Firat attracted the attention of the inspectors, who were also among the candidates who were regularly checked by Fellner. In the course of this investigation, Ballauf found out that an empty one-room apartment in the same house was registered with the Cologne Youth Welfare Office for three women with a total of seven children for advances on maintenance payments.

The trail then leads to the head of the office Breitenbach, who uses this mailbox address to grant payments on a large scale, which he is very likely to withhold. In addition, he maintains a relationship with the single parent Julia Beck, for which he sometimes anesthetizes his own family with sleeping pills in order to be able to cheat undisturbed. He falls into a violent fit of anger when his wife finds out.

When Ballauf and Schenk wanted to arrest Breitenbach, he was sitting with his visibly distraught family at a board game in order to maintain the illusion of a perfect family as a broken man. It remains to be seen whether he also murdered Fellner. It is simply implied that she was slowly getting to the bottom of his illegal payments.

The episode ends with Rainer Hildebrandt, who ambushes his ex-wife in the garden of the architect's villa in the evening and attacks her with a golf club after she has left no doubt that she will seek sole custody of her children.

background

The film was shot from March 12, 2019 to April 11, 2019 in Cologne and the surrounding area.

reception

Reviews

"But even if some of the characters in this" crime scene "remain stenciled - such as screenwriter Jürgen Werner, the creator of the Dortmund" Tatort "area, and director Nina Wolfrum depict families in a state of decline, that is very contemporary. Strong, how the milieus merge here, how the gender roles are kept open, without it appearing intentionally. "

- Christian Buß : The mirror

“The Hildebrandt couple [...] have shown respect for each other over the years. The two let the viewer empathize with what happens when love does not turn into indifference, as usual. But hate. The episode lives from the class of such actors and actresses, and it becomes weaker precisely where it gets caught up in the traditional. Old-fashioned dialogues of the inspectors, eternal driving around in the car, and the assistant Jütte [...] is so clearly laid out as a bumbling figure. "

- Holger Gertz : Süddeutsche Zeitung

Audience rating

The first broadcast of Never Without Me on March 22, 2020 was seen by 10.88 million viewers in Germany and achieved a market share of 27.6% for Das Erste .

Trivia

This time the two chief inspectors use a Chevrolet Suburban for their official trips .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Crime scene: Never without me at crew united
  2. ↑ Christian Buß: Cologne "crime scene" about custody. Combat zone nuclear family. In: Culture. Der Spiegel , March 23, 2020, accessed on March 23, 2020 : "7 out of 10 points"
  3. ↑ Holger Gertz: Marriage Wars. In: Media. Süddeutsche Zeitung, March 21, 2020, accessed on March 21, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Niklas Spitz: Prime Time check: Sunday, 22 March 2020. Quotenmeter.de , March 23, 2020 accessed on 23 March 2020 .
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