The crime series starts on West German television with a German-German case
Tatort – the German word for “crime scene” – was the trendy new series of police procedurals first broadcast on West German public television on 29 November 1970 at 8:20 p.m. The film “Taxi to Leipzig” involved a cross-border case. In the midst of the Cold War, the DDR Attorney General’s Office requests assistance from the West German police after a dead boy in West German clothing is found at a rest stop on the transit motorway between West Germany and West Berlin. Following the first episode, there was a new Tatort every month for several years; now there are about 35 broadcast every year on Sunday evenings in the primetime slot. The programmes usually follow the same structure. After the well-known theme music – which has hardly changed in over 50 years – one or more detectives try to track down a murderer. As the series is produced by the various German regional broadcasters, each programme is set in a different city or region every time.
With over 1,300 episodes, Tatort is not only the longest-running crime series in the German-speaking world, but also the most popular. It includes contributions from Austria and Switzerland. The series has a vast and loyal following and consistently achieves the highest viewing figures. Viewers and critics alike usually suspend disbelief for long enough to accept deficits in realism. As the programmes often address controversial topics, the series is considered to have social value beyond mere entertainment. It has even been compared to a “contemporary novel”, and many of its episodes have won prestigious awards. Since German reunification, Tatort has shared its Sunday evening slot with Polizeiruf 110, the continuation of the East German version of Tatort which began in the summer of 1971.
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