TATVERDACHT is a fresh police drama starring Nina Kronjäger, presenting the difficult work of the criminal investigation department in Frankfurt's underworld in a highly dramatic and very authentic way. In the 45-minute episodes, the lines between classic police drama and documentary dissolve. The boldly documentary camera style and, above all, the unaffected, largely improvised dialogue create the incomparable impression of witnessing a real police investigation.
The format is based on the British forerunner SUSPECTS and is in no way inferior to it. Nor is it scripted reality of the kind otherwise familiar from German television, since the characters are embodied by actors who bring the necessary force to their performances.
In the second episode, Jörg Westphal plays the tax adviser Andreas Berthold. His colleague Diana Ackermann — wife of his old schoolfriend, the chief detective Harald Ackermann — is raped. The investigation's crosshairs fall on Berthold, who stayed at the office with Diana until very late, and on a repeatedly convicted rapist, Georg Kallert.
Jörg Westphal on the shoot: "It was genuinely very exciting and unfamiliar to commit to this as an actor — not being able to work from a prepared script, or sitting in an interrogation room being questioned without the usual camera crew. Here the room had eyes and ears in the truest sense of the word — cameras and microphones were set into the walls, almost invisible. But that, in turn, creates a real sense of interrogation. There's only you and your fellow officers."
Production: UFA Serial Drama for RTL · Director: Sven Fehrensen and Janis Rebecca Rattenni