New “crime scene” from Ludwigshafen: Where is the skylight here?

Camera off! "Immediately!", calls Inspector Johanna Stern (Lisa Bitter), while a paramedic tries to treat the head of the investigators who has been shot. The way this first scene bangs, the whole "crime scene" could bang, after all, it's about a group of people who blow up ATMs and domestic violence. Nevertheless, the story is told in an uncomfortably leisurely manner and the lighting is dimmed. Whether the skylight was simply not repaired for financial reasons or whether someone with a passion for indirect light prevailed on the board remains in the shadows, as does the question of what all this is supposed to tell us.

The best thing to do is to turn on a flashlight next to the couch so that your hand can reach into the bag of chips accurately while Lena Odenthal (Ulrike Folkerts) and colleague Stern have to approach the case.

A man is dead; he was part of the team that blows up machines and then, Stern suspects, runs away with the loot straight abroad. Luckily, “Explosive Mixture” stays in the streets of Ludwigshafen, a bar and Isa Meisner’s apartment. Odenthal takes her there because she urgently wants to speak to Meisner's husband Ulf (Christian Schneeweiß). He leads a vigilante group, but is also in charge at home, where he beats his wife with hate. He himself justifies his vigilante action with the failure of the police. He wants to protect women and children.

Meanwhile, young men who call themselves the slaughterhouse gang roam the streets. Chris, the dead man's petty criminal brother, is one of them, fleeing from the police and misogynist Meisner. There he meets Nico Langenkamp (Johannes Scheidweiler). We know each other from our youth. He prefers to keep the fact that Langenkamp now works in the Odenthal/Stern team a secret. He wants to know what happened and is worried. What does it do to a person when former friends mess up and die in the process? Maybe they are perpetrators?

Ludwigshafen “Tatort”: “Explosive Mixture”, Sunday, 8.15 p.m., ARD, from Friday in the media library

As befits a “crime scene,” Langenkamp doesn’t discuss anything with the team. It would be even nicer if we talked to each other! Instead, the slot machines flash, the explosives pop, the fists crash dully into skin and bones. And that's even before all the suspects unexpectedly and naturally meet again in the dark headquarters.