ARD crime scene | Max Ballauf: 100 is the new 30 at “Tatort”

Photo: IMAGO/Christoph Hardt Television makes you old. The actor Klaus J. Behrendt no longer wants to take part in “Tatort”. Next year, after the 100th episode of the Cologne “Tatort” it will be over. He is then 67 years old (in real life) and has been working for 50 years because he started working at 17 when he trained as a mining mechanic. But at the beginning of the 80s the mines were already dying, and Behrendt became an actor as a precaution.

As such, he is only known for a single role: as chief detective Max Ballauf, who has been investigating in the Cologne area since 1997 in a duo with Alfred "Freddy" Schenk (played by Dietmar Bär). At the end of almost every episode they stand in front of a snack bar on the Rhine, eat Currywust, drink beer and look at the Rhine. This is how tradition goes in German Sunday evening television, which is on its way down in a linear fashion. The "crime scene", invented at the time when Willy Brandt was still chancellor and Gerd Müller was the center forward of FC Bayern, is inflating to death: there are constantly more investigators in more and more cities and regions, which are being looked at by fewer and fewer people. “Tatort” fans are like SPD voters, “Frankfurter Rundschau” readers or squash players: a declining species.

Behrendt has aged with them as Max Ballauf. Ballauf first investigated in another WDR "crime scene" team, namely in Cologne's rival city of Düsseldorf, where he was assistant to the thoughtful Bernd Flemming (Martin Lüttke): young and excited and hard to stop. Then the real Behrendt left the series and returned in 1997 as Ballauf, this time as Freddy Schenk's new colleague in the Cologne homicide squad.

Something like this happened extremely rarely on "old" television, for example when in 1974 on ZDF Fritz Wepper as Harry Klein switched from "The Commissioner" to "Derrick" and was replaced in "Kommissar" by his brother Erwin, who was also played by Wepper's real brother Fritz. But in the “new” television of streaming services with its spin-offs, prequels and sequels, this is no longer anything special.

Ballauf's move from Düsseldorf to Cologne was accompanied by a change in character. Now Schenk was the quick-tempered type and Ballauf was very reserved, on the verge of depression and unable to have relationships. Slightly mysterious, but interesting because of that. Just like the Cologne “crime scenes” in general, which, along with those from Munich, were the last “crime scenes” whose scripts are not as flat and predictable as the others in this series.

The “Munichers” were the first to break the 100th episode mark (and then resigned). In Cologne, Bär will continue as a Schenk. His WDR “Tatort” predecessors had to stop earlier: Flemming after 15 episodes, his predecessor Schimanski after 29. But he then returned as an unbearable pseudo-James Bond with his own “Schimanski” series. That cannot be done with Ballauf. Klaus J. Behrendt is said to be a likeable, sociable and actually shy person.

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