“Tatort” from Cologne: Freddy Schenk’s most personal case – panorama
Cologne (AP) – An arson attack is carried out on a Persian restaurant in Cologne. The charred corpse of the alleged arsonist lies in the bar. But the man did not die from the fire, but from a blow to the head. A case for the inspectors Max Ballauf (Klaus J. Behrendt) and Freddy Schenk (Dietmar Bär). With the episode “Protection Measures” from Cologne, ARD opens the “Tatort” year on January 1 (8:15 p.m., Das Erste).
For Schenk it is a very personal case, because the restaurant belongs to his daughter Sonja (Natalie Spinell). Is there a right-wing extremist motive behind the attack? This is supported by the fact that the dead man is Nico Raschke, who recently got out of prison and used to be active in the hooligan scene. As a precaution, Schenk brings nun Sonja and her partner Karim (Timur Isik) and 15-year-old granddaughter Frida (Maira Helene Kellers) to a police shelter.
Nico is the son of the delicatessen Viktor Raschke (Manfred Zapatka), who believes there are many restaurants in the area. It soon becomes apparent that, with the help of his older son Marco (Paul Wollin), Raschke has his customers under control. “We help each other here in the district,” as Raschke puts it. When witnesses are questioned, the inspectors are met with silence.
Emotional Investigations
The investigation is emotionally upsetting for Schenk because he worries about his daughter and granddaughter. After that, he is even pulled off the case because he lacks the necessary distance. But that doesn’t stop him from investigating further on his own. Sonja and Karim, however, Schenk’s “protective instinct” goes too far. Sonja accuses her father of still seeing her as a little girl instead of a grown woman.
Fans of the Cologne “Tatort” thriller, which celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2022, know that Ballauf is a solitary bachelor and Schenk is a family man. Now viewers have rarely seen Schenk’s family. His wife has never been shown, his two daughters Sonja and Melanie appeared occasionally – Sonja most recently in 1999, even then played by Natalie Spinell.
“I had to see the old ‘crime scene’ again to understand how I created the character back then,” says Spinell, according to the press release. “What’s the relationship like with a father who loves his job so much that he doesn’t even know the new partner of two years or the new restaurant of the adult daughter?”
Relationship should be put to the test
For screenwriter Paul Salisbury (director: Nina Vukovic), it was “very appealing to tell the story of Commissioner Freddy Schenk as a father and grandfather and to revisit the relationship with his older daughter Sonja that hasn’t been recorded for so long,” as he says. “It wasn’t supposed to be an ‘amusing subplot’, but something that really tests the relationship between the two of them.”
At the end of the episode, Sonja draws a positive conclusion in conversation with her father: “Maybe I have a little more from you than just your stubbornness.” Consequences WILL play a visible role.