Munich: my own private Tatort
If you find yourself sitting in awkward silence with a German, try breaking the ice by asking him about ‘Tatort.’ The mere mention of the show makes 9 out of 10 Germans’ eyes light up as their tongues trip over their lips in a rush to push out the words to describe how they have been watching it since before they were born and they never do anything else on a Sunday night ever.
From discussions such as these I had gleaned that ‘Tatort’ is a detective series kind of like ‘Law and Order.’ It has been on since the dawn of time (1970). Each episode takes place in one of a handful of cities, each city having its own recurring cast of local detectives. Germans will be happy to tell you which cities produce the best episodes, and some even schedule their TV viewing in advance based on the location of the episode on any particular Sunday evening. This show is loved.
So when we received a note in our mailbox explaining that they would be filming an episode of ‘Tatort’ Munich on the street in front of our building, we immediately understood the importance of the occasion. I would have a ready biergarten conversation topic for the rest of the summer.
The view from my studio was perfect, and I got very little painting done that week with all the distracting interestingness going on outside the window. From the start it was pretty clear that two gray-haired men were the stars, with everyone and their mother posing for photos with them before filming got underway (with the help of Google I was able to figure out who they were). Some scenes were filmed inside a small cafe, which had been re-named for the show; others took place in the street and on the sidewalk. Scenes were redone dozens of times. An old woman swept the street in front of the cafe for the better part of a morning; the detectives got out of their car, had a conversation in the middle of the street, and entered the cafe over and over and over; a sneaky-looking guy tried to break into the cafe before slinking off repeatedly in a night scene that was probably my favorite of them all.
For the very last scene the cafe was transformed into a tacky mattress shop. But surely viewers would recognize that the same building was being used as both locations? Or was it part of an elaborate plot twist – the sneaky guy having somehow swindled the old couple out of their cute little cafe so he could turn it into part of his evil mattress empire? I can’t wait to see the whole episode to find out (alas, it’s not on the schedule yet).
As a footnote to this post, I should mention that I had never actually seen an episode of ‘Tatort’ before the filming on our street. Since then I have seen exactly one: a rerun of a Munich episode from last year that was on a couple weeks ago. In it, one of the two gray-haired detectives wakes up with amnesia (yes, really). At some point he steals the other gray-haired detective’s clothes at gunpoint and drives off in his car, stranding him naked on the side of the road. It was so bad it was good (is that an expression in German?). Also, I had a hard time remembering which gray-haired detective was which.
Do you have a favorite German TV show?
