Babylon Berlin (Review)
You know, during the last two years or thereabouts I more than once had the experience that a tv show was available on Netflix (or Amazon Prime) outside the US and thus to me while US viewers either had to pay or be attached to a particular channel to watch it. Well, with Babylon Berlin the reverse was true; while mostly a German production (with international money), it has been available on US Netflix for eons while it only became available (and not on Netflix) in Germany now that it’s been broadcast at one of our major tv broacasting channels, the ARD (which also serves as coproducer).
What it is about: it’s a noir series set in Berlin, 1929, based on a series of mystery novels by Volker Kutscher which I haven’t read but am planning to, not least because I’m going to meet the author next year. Anyway, I can’t compare the source material to the tv show yet, and thus am reporting on tv only impressions. One of the driving forces behind the tv version is Tom Twyker, known to overseas folk mainly for Run Lola Run and also, if you’re a Sense 8 fan, for his involvement with the later. The main actors and their characters: Volker Bruch as Gereon Rath, our main detective, originally from Cologne but newly transferred to Berlin, as befits a noir cop traumatized by his past (he’s a WWI veteran with PTSD and a secret beyond that), self-medicating with morphine and generally a repressed emotional mess; Liv Lisa Fries as Charlotte Ritter, certainly deserving to be the show’s breakout character, trying to make a living as a police typist by day and dancer with a sideline in occasional prostitution by night but harboring the burning ambition to become the first female detective in the Berlin police force; Peter Kurth as Bruno Wolter, whom Batman afficianados might be tempted to regard as the Harvey Bullock of Berlin (i.e. corrupt cop but with a good core due to his jovial, cheerful attitude towards our two heroes), which would be a mistake. These, however, are but three of a big ensemble, which doesn’t get confusing (at least imo), and it’s to the show’s credit that supporting characters, like Stefan Jänicke (temporary sidekick of Gereon and good friend to Lotte) and his two deaf parents (btw: said parents being deaf and Stefan talking to them in sign language (and vice versa) throughout without this being made a big deal of strikes me as a great way to include characters with a physical handicap without falling into a „very special episode“ attitude) or Lotte’s friend Greta feel real and fleshed out.
Occasionally, there’s a bit of „Weimar Republic Clichés Check List“ feeling (of course there’s an androgynous singer, Svetlana Sorokina, played by Severija Janušauskaitė, who performs in drag, and before you can say Doctor Mabuse, there’s a hypnotist doctor, too), but not in a way that irritated me. You can tell this wasn’t written by a Brit or US American by the fact that the Nazis, while present, actually aren’t the main villains (yet), and that the fact the army is full of disgruntled monarchists with no loyalty to the new republic, going all the way up to the time’s most prominent ex-soldier, President Paul von Hindenburg, is the far more immediate menace. The show also uses the infamous „Blood May“ incident where over 30 civilians died when the police went down mercilessly on a May 1st demonstration, and the Stalinists versus exile Trotzkytes rivalries to paint a far more diverse political picture than you get from, say, just about any story set in the same era where the pov is a British or US visitor.
The various plot threads start out separately but turn out to be connected, as befits a good mystery. Some pot holes and/or illogical circumstances (such as why on earth the main underworld boss doesn’t kill Gereon Rath on at least two occasions when it would make sense for him to) later turn out to have an explanation, but it’s not always spelled out. (Such as Greta’s final realization in episode 16 when she sees a certain someone; it’s obvious what this implies but no one tells us the audience this in dialogue.) The extreme poverty of most people (except for a few) in the era is always present. (Lotte can’t afford to actually own the party dresses she wears; they’re a loan in the night club and part of why she’s expected to indulge the occasional customer. There are no hot, or for that matter cold showers for Lotte and her family; she and Greta go to a public bath. When someone dies, the obvious option is to donate the body to the Charité, the famous Berlin hospital, because that way you don’t have to pay for a coffin and funeral. And so forth.
Another great thing to this German viewer is that the accents are right. Meaning: Lotte Ritter and the other Berlin (and surrounding area) based characters speak with a strong Berlin accent, whereas Gereon-from-Cologne decidedly does not, while a lone Bavarian exile (an apothocary) talks with a Bavarian accent, and so forth. (As opposed to everyone speaking Hochdeutsch and/or speaking English with a fake German accent.) But really,the show’s greatest charm is Lotte dancing the night away when she’s not doggedly investigating and either charming or tricking or badgering people into telling her what she needs to know, and her brittle, slowly forming team-up with Gereon Rath who definitely did not come to Berlin looking for a partner in crime solving, least of all a typist who keeps surprising him.
Nitpick: I’m not really sold on the *spoiler* having their secret headquarters in *spoiler*, but that’s just unlikely enough to have been a historical truth (a superficial search won’t say one way or the other).
Not a nitpick: since the actual Berlin head of police, Zörgiebel, appears under his own name, I was a bit confused for much of the show why a character obviously meant to be Bernhard Weiß, one of the few really sympathetic Weimar era police figures (and the actor even made to look like him), the vice president the Berlin police force, appears under the nome de plume of August Benda, but then when a certain subplot came to its head I realized the reason was that Weiß‘ fate is historically certain, and the series needed to go into another direction with Benda.
Trigger: well, let’s see. It’s a story set in a besieged republic with loud extremists hijacking public attention. I don’t know, could this remind you of anything?
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1312155.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
What it is about: it’s a noir series set in Berlin, 1929, based on a series of mystery novels by Volker Kutscher which I haven’t read but am planning to, not least because I’m going to meet the author next year. Anyway, I can’t compare the source material to the tv show yet, and thus am reporting on tv only impressions. One of the driving forces behind the tv version is Tom Twyker, known to overseas folk mainly for Run Lola Run and also, if you’re a Sense 8 fan, for his involvement with the later. The main actors and their characters: Volker Bruch as Gereon Rath, our main detective, originally from Cologne but newly transferred to Berlin, as befits a noir cop traumatized by his past (he’s a WWI veteran with PTSD and a secret beyond that), self-medicating with morphine and generally a repressed emotional mess; Liv Lisa Fries as Charlotte Ritter, certainly deserving to be the show’s breakout character, trying to make a living as a police typist by day and dancer with a sideline in occasional prostitution by night but harboring the burning ambition to become the first female detective in the Berlin police force; Peter Kurth as Bruno Wolter, whom Batman afficianados might be tempted to regard as the Harvey Bullock of Berlin (i.e. corrupt cop but with a good core due to his jovial, cheerful attitude towards our two heroes), which would be a mistake. These, however, are but three of a big ensemble, which doesn’t get confusing (at least imo), and it’s to the show’s credit that supporting characters, like Stefan Jänicke (temporary sidekick of Gereon and good friend to Lotte) and his two deaf parents (btw: said parents being deaf and Stefan talking to them in sign language (and vice versa) throughout without this being made a big deal of strikes me as a great way to include characters with a physical handicap without falling into a „very special episode“ attitude) or Lotte’s friend Greta feel real and fleshed out.
Occasionally, there’s a bit of „Weimar Republic Clichés Check List“ feeling (of course there’s an androgynous singer, Svetlana Sorokina, played by Severija Janušauskaitė, who performs in drag, and before you can say Doctor Mabuse, there’s a hypnotist doctor, too), but not in a way that irritated me. You can tell this wasn’t written by a Brit or US American by the fact that the Nazis, while present, actually aren’t the main villains (yet), and that the fact the army is full of disgruntled monarchists with no loyalty to the new republic, going all the way up to the time’s most prominent ex-soldier, President Paul von Hindenburg, is the far more immediate menace. The show also uses the infamous „Blood May“ incident where over 30 civilians died when the police went down mercilessly on a May 1st demonstration, and the Stalinists versus exile Trotzkytes rivalries to paint a far more diverse political picture than you get from, say, just about any story set in the same era where the pov is a British or US visitor.
The various plot threads start out separately but turn out to be connected, as befits a good mystery. Some pot holes and/or illogical circumstances (such as why on earth the main underworld boss doesn’t kill Gereon Rath on at least two occasions when it would make sense for him to) later turn out to have an explanation, but it’s not always spelled out. (Such as Greta’s final realization in episode 16 when she sees a certain someone; it’s obvious what this implies but no one tells us the audience this in dialogue.) The extreme poverty of most people (except for a few) in the era is always present. (Lotte can’t afford to actually own the party dresses she wears; they’re a loan in the night club and part of why she’s expected to indulge the occasional customer. There are no hot, or for that matter cold showers for Lotte and her family; she and Greta go to a public bath. When someone dies, the obvious option is to donate the body to the Charité, the famous Berlin hospital, because that way you don’t have to pay for a coffin and funeral. And so forth.
Another great thing to this German viewer is that the accents are right. Meaning: Lotte Ritter and the other Berlin (and surrounding area) based characters speak with a strong Berlin accent, whereas Gereon-from-Cologne decidedly does not, while a lone Bavarian exile (an apothocary) talks with a Bavarian accent, and so forth. (As opposed to everyone speaking Hochdeutsch and/or speaking English with a fake German accent.) But really,the show’s greatest charm is Lotte dancing the night away when she’s not doggedly investigating and either charming or tricking or badgering people into telling her what she needs to know, and her brittle, slowly forming team-up with Gereon Rath who definitely did not come to Berlin looking for a partner in crime solving, least of all a typist who keeps surprising him.
Nitpick: I’m not really sold on the *spoiler* having their secret headquarters in *spoiler*, but that’s just unlikely enough to have been a historical truth (a superficial search won’t say one way or the other).
Not a nitpick: since the actual Berlin head of police, Zörgiebel, appears under his own name, I was a bit confused for much of the show why a character obviously meant to be Bernhard Weiß, one of the few really sympathetic Weimar era police figures (and the actor even made to look like him), the vice president the Berlin police force, appears under the nome de plume of August Benda, but then when a certain subplot came to its head I realized the reason was that Weiß‘ fate is historically certain, and the series needed to go into another direction with Benda.
Trigger: well, let’s see. It’s a story set in a besieged republic with loud extremists hijacking public attention. I don’t know, could this remind you of anything?
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1312155.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.