TV outlook: “The end of the night”: pure excitement in the Saarbrücken “crime scene”

There are crime novels that start harmlessly, pick up speed, build up to the climax and then dissolve happily with the conclusion of the case. Things are different with “End of the Night”, the sixth case in the Saarbrücken “crime scene” (tomorrow at 8:15 p.m., Das Erste). The tension is in the air from the first moment and doesn’t really subside until the very last minute.

It’s not just the action-packed plot and the search for the perpetrators that keeps the viewer on the edge of their seats. It is also the emotional tension, the relationship between the criminal mother and her daughter, that takes the viewer along. And like so often in life, this mixture of crime and thriller is about the question of responsibility and guilt.

Brutal attack on a cash-in-transit truck

This time, the focus of the four-person investigative team led by Leo Hölzer (Vladimir Burlakov) and Adam Schürk (Daniel Sträßer) is a woman: the sleepless chief inspector Pia Heinrich (Ines Marie Westernströer). She is the first on the scene when a security guard is killed in a brutal attack on a cash-in-transit truck.

The crime appears to bear the hallmarks of an internationally wanted criminal gang. How good that Francophone Chief Inspector Esther Baumann (Brigitte Urhausen) can activate her close contacts with the French police in the neighboring country. Or is the team following the wrong lead and the surviving security guard knows more than he’s letting on? In any case, Pia is in danger.

Once again, the inspectors and friends Hölzer and Schürk are caught up in their past. This case once again raises the question of how far an investigator can go. How loyal you are to your colleagues and what consequences your actions have.

Again and again: Children’s search for love

And there is another theme that runs through Saarland Radio’s “Tatorten” like a common thread: children’s search for love and confirmation from their parents. Boring? Not at all.

Director Tini Tüllmann also believes that excitement through action alone can hardly be maintained for over 90 minutes. “Something like this is actually impossible to dock without emotions.” Based on Melanie Waelde’s book (“The Cold of the Earth”), she cleverly interwoven the horizontal narrative style and the different storylines without it seeming artificial.

Commissioners more in the foreground

The director found it beneficial that in this case from Saarland the female inspectors were finally brought to the fore. “That was especially nice for me,” she told the German Press Agency. “It’s not true that you always think there are only two boys.” In her opinion, every case should always focus on two of the four investigators – “and alternate them.”

Adam Schürk and his colleague Pia Heinrich are unusually close in this episode. Like two lonely cowboys who wander through the night and their lives without a home – and find support in each other. Or as actor Daniel Sträßer describes it: “Two very lost souls meet here in their lost state – and they can catch each other in a very beautiful way.”

Parallels as criminal children

The fact that Schürk shares the same fate as one of the suspects – namely, being the child of a criminal – and both feel alone in their own way, provides an additional attraction. Brilliant in their roles: Lena Urzendowsky as Carla Radek and Sabine Timoteo as her mother Beatrice Radek.

And more and more you suspect that no matter what “backpack” you got from your parents, what guilt you live with or what trauma you have to deal with: in the end it always depends on what you make of it. Or, as Adam Schürk says to the suspect Carla: “It’s your decision. Everything you do is up to you alone.”

But in the end – and especially this time – the problem remains, as with all Saarbrücken “crime scenes”: that you have to wait a year to find out what happens next.

ARD “Tatort”: “The End of the Night”