Under other circumstances: death of a stalker

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Episode in the series Under Different Circumstances
Original title Death of a stalker
Country of production Germany
original language German
Production
company		 Network Movie
on behalf of ZDF
length 90 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
classification Episode 12 ( list )
First broadcast December 5, 2016 on ZDF
Rod
Director Judith Kennel
script Sören Hüper
Christian Prettin
production Jutta Lieck-Klenke
Dietrich Kluge
music Jean-Paul Wall
camera Nathalie Wiedemann
cut Jan Pusch
occupation
chronology

←  Predecessor
The promise

Successor  →
love rush

Death of a Stalker is a German TV film directed by Judith Kennel from 2016. It is the twelfth episode of the crime series Unter Otherbedingungen with Natalia Wörner in the lead role.

action

Little did Commissioner Jana Winter suspect that she would be the victim of a plot. A stranger threatens the imprisoned erotic center and amusement arcade king Gluseck with the murder of his brother if he does not help to teach Commissioner Winter a lesson.

The disaster begins one morning when a driver is followed by Commissioner Winter. After she took her son Leo to school, the driver even threatened her. She recognizes him as Ricky Rehberg, a criminal she had jailed some time ago. Jana Winter confides in her closest colleague Matthias Hamm, who then confronts Rehberg. This explains summarily that he is the victim and the Commissioner him have threatened. That same evening, Jana Winter was lured out of her house to a remote junkyard and Rehberg alerted the emergency number because he was supposedly being followed by the inspector. When Jana Winter arrives, she finds Rehberg shot next to his car. Since she cannot present anything in her defense and everything speaks against her, the independent investigator Harald Voss from the internal department is called in. Voss is investigating together with Commissioner Cornelius Brettschneider. Unfortunately, the projectile of the fatal shot cannot help relieve the load, as it has not yet been found due to the penetration. In contrast, a cartridge case was found at the scene of the crime, which clearly came from the detective's weapon. This means that Commissioner Brauner cannot prevent Jana Winter from being brought into custody. Commissioner Voss now takes over the entire management and forbids Brauner and his people any activities in the Rehberg case. Matthias Hamm still stands by his colleague without reservation.

Jana Winter is clear that she was lured into a trap with Rehberg as a puppet. Since he had gambling debts with Gluseck, which Rehberg recently paid off, she hopes Gluseck will answer her questions. She contacts him in the correctional facility, where she finds a calm old man who seems to have found God while in custody. She can talk to him surprisingly well, but she is suspicious. Gluseck makes it clear to her that this time he is not the bad guy, but that a cunning psychopath is after her. If she wants to win the game, “she has to play along”. With these words he prepares her escape, which he has threaded through his connections in the prison. The Commissioner does not know that this escape is also part of the perpetrator's plan. Because now she is officially hunted by the police, what her opponent wants to use for his goal.

During his research in Rehberg's notebook, Commissioner Voss comes across e-mails that are labeled "Winter Games" and that exonerate the Commissioner. Surprised by his discovery, he calls Brauner and wants to meet him, but on the way there he is killed and his notebook stolen from him. His assistant, Cornelius Brettschneider, takes over the management from now on and relentlessly follows the trail of the escapee, without bothering about Voss' discovery. Jana Winter barely escapes a SEK mission and contacts Matthias Hamm. She meets with him in secret and both are now convinced that "the great stranger" must be an insider, because he simply knows too many details of police work and was therefore able to bypass and manipulate them.

The IT expert wrote down the encrypted sender of the inaccessible e-mails. After a long search, Commissioner Hamm finds the name hidden behind the email address and that leads to a ten-year-old case . At that time, Susanne Ahrend had suffocated her baby because she was pregnant by him after repeated sexual abuse of her father. Jana Winter gets in touch with the woman and asks her if there is still an “old bill open” between them because she still cannot explain this plot against her. Susanne Ahrend denies and explains credibly that she is at peace with herself. During the conversation, however, the commissioner learns that Ahrend's little brother was also abused by her father at the time and that he would not have finished with the whole thing, but suppressed it and presented it as slander. He also blames his sister for killing himself in prison. So that such a “miscarriage of justice” could never happen again, he would have become a police officer himself. Jana Winter has a picture of her brother shown and recognizes Cornelius Brettschneider. Since he had taken his mother's name, no one recognized this connection. Together with Matthias Hamm, Jana Winter lures Brettschneider into a trap so that he betrays himself and can be arrested.

Jana Winter goes back to the prison and thanks Klaus-Dieter Gluseck. Both had become the tools of a psychopath.

background

Death of a Stalker was broadcast on ZDF as TV movie of the week on December 5, 2016 .

The role name Ricky Rehberg was used before in the very first episode of the crime series. At the time as the alleged father of the killed infant, this time as the eponymous stalker.

reception

Audience ratings

The first broadcast of Death of a Stalker on December 5, 2016 on ZDF was followed by 5.04 million viewers, which corresponded to a market share of 15.5 percent.

Reviews

Volker Bergmeister from Tittelbach.tv wrote: “A story full of twists and turns, but the authors exaggerate it: the crime thriller turns into a robber's gun in places. At least Judith Kennel, director of all films in the series, and her camerawoman Nathalie Wiedemann achieve normal form. […] Author Georgi lets the inspector look into human abysses, director Judith Kennel sends her on an emotional ascent and descent. A thriller in a quiet tone that leaves the viewer in a deadly sad state. "

Ulrich Feld wrote at the Frankfurter Neue Presse : “The story gets going quickly, and Natalia Wörner fits the role of the persecuted woman very well. In addition, there is the good interplay not only of the actors in front of the camera, but also of a fast-paced script with a pretty conspiracy story and a calm direction. "

The critics of the TV magazine TV Spielfilm also rated it positively and wrote: "Under the tried and tested direction of Judith Kennel, the calmly staged crime thriller scores with a lot of tension and references to earlier cases by the inspector."

At the FAZ Heike Hupertz wrote: “This time [...] the script is the major shortcoming of an over-constructed plot with lots of allusions to earlier cases [...]. The will to branch out dominates. ”Only at the end does“ The fog over Schleswig […] clear, but only to reveal a narrative labyrinth made up of unnecessarily many dead ends. A consistently chosen downward spiral would have been better. "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Volker Bergmeister: Wörner, Brambach, Zeiler, Zirner, Kennel. Can it also be a size smaller ?! , at Tittelbach.tv , accessed on March 23, 2017.
  2. ↑ Ulrich Feld: Nice oppressive at fnp.de, accessed on May 11, 2017.
  3. ↑ Short review on the TVSpielfilm website, accessed on March 23, 2017.
  4. ↑ Heike Hupertz: Does the inspector have someone on her conscience? at faz.net, accessed on May 11, 2017.