October 5th, ZDF, 8:15 p.m
Murder cases are being solved elsewhere, but “Wilsberg” wants more. At the start of crime thriller number 83 with the private detective from Münster, a violent crime is also committed, and of course the search for the solution to the deadly mystery is once again the driving force of the plot, but the fuel is primarily provided by the secondary levels.
This especially applies to the most original idea from the tried and tested duo Sandra Lüpkes and Jürgen Kehrer; The creator of the antiquarian bookstore owner and full-time investigator Georg Wilsberg (Leonard Lansink) has been writing the scripts for the series together with his wife for many years. “Blood tasted” begins at the weekly market. An assistant is supposed to get supplies from the van, but doesn’t return: someone has stabbed her over twenty times.
A typical case of overkill, as an expert on violent crimes immediately interviewed by local television states: Thanks to FBI training as a profiler, Elmar Lenz (Thomas Arnold) is considered Germany’s number one expert on serial murders; However, he owes his fame to a podcast. Because he believes, perhaps not entirely wrongly, that the local police could be overwhelmed by the case, he quickly offers himself as an external consultant.
At least Inspector Drechshage (Stefan Haschke), a big admirer anyway, is pretty enthusiastic about it. Overbeck (Roland Jankowsky), on the other hand, can easily do without the services of his “colleague”, after all, he was already doing profiling when the word was not even known in this country. The fact that the two police officers from now on engage in a kindergarten tussle, which is quietly endured by their disgracefully underestimated colleague Wolfangel (Sarah Alles) and is mostly commented on with eye rolls, is due to their boss’s time off: Anna Springer (Rita Russek) has used a sabbatical to write a book about her to write cases.
Thanks to her busy editor Lucia Hillbeck (Liza Tzschirner), “The Cruelty of the Idyll” has surprisingly become a “true crime” bestseller. On the very evening of the day on which the young market woman was so brutally torn from her life, there is a reading in which the editor pulls out all the stops of strikingness. However, the author, who tends to be more objective, is extremely uncomfortable with phrases like “The monster from the lock basin” or “The monster from the fashion house”, and quite rightly so, as it soon becomes clear: The “monster” in question has apparently struck again. At least the death of the young woman bears a striking resemblance to the murder of the fashion house owner. René Rösch (Jörn Hentschel) has just been released after many years in prison at the instigation of his lawyer, Wilsberg confidante Tessa Tilker.
Patricia Meeden has been part of the regular ensemble of the ZDF long-running hit since case number 73. “One of us” (2021) was also Philipp Osthus’ “Wilsberg” debut. He shot five of the last ten episodes including “Blood Licked”. Apart from one outlier, they were all worth seeing, and that was by no means just because of the good scripts. The well-rehearsed ensemble probably doesn’t need much guidance, after all, the participants know their roles better than the director in case of doubt, but that’s precisely why it’s all the more important not to let the performances freeze into routine.
On the other hand, the two district heroes Overbeck and Drechshage, for example, must not turn into clowns that no one takes seriously anymore. The editor also walks a fine line with her brightly colored outfit and over-the-top demeanor. The counterpart is Anna Springer, who has a contract for two books but no more ideas. In addition, Rösch has apparently taken aim at them: because his case has become public again due to the customer, he can’t find any work.
This solution would of course be far too obvious, which is why Lüpkes and Kehrer bring additional suspects into play, including the victim’s retraumatized daughter (Ada Philine Stappenbeck). A chase with e-scooters on the university campus against the backdrop of the venerable castle ensures dynamism in the implementation, which Osthus spices up with various classic tension amplifiers. The setting is no coincidence: the murder victim from the market studied media studies. In fact, the key to the solution is in her master’s thesis (“The Innocence of the Monster”). Their basic thesis is “The worse the crime, the greater the fame”; and that by no means only applies to the perpetrators.
