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Small fry criminals Zartl (Michael Schottenberg) and Stebich (András Gönczöl) raid a post office, and they come away with quite a bit of money - and a hostage, Pribil (Gerhard Swoboda). When they've pretty much made good their getaway have arrived at their hide-out, Zartl decides he wants to keep the loot for himself and thus ties up both Stebich and Pribil, leaving them to their own devices. But when he arrives at his boss's, Horrak (Ernst Konarek) - so much of course for keeping the loot for himself -, it turns out that the bag with the loot is only filled with newspapers. Horrak has Zartl hire a contract killer, Cerny (Tony Aitken), and then tells that man to kill Zartl.

In the meantime, Kottan (Lukas Resetarits) and his assistants Schremser (Walter Davy) and Schrammel (Curt A. Tichy) have been tasked with investigating the case, and when they find dead Zartl, they're quick to tie him to Horrak, but they can't pin anything on him. They soon pick up the trail to the other robber, Stebich, who only just escapes in an extended chase sequence, but later he escapes as well. Horrak gets cold feet and orders Kottan killed, but Cerny only hits his badge, and now Kottan and company know Horrak is behind it all - but when they confront him, they notice how little they have against him since Horrak doesn't have the loot. That said, Horrak must have been tipped off that the post office was carrying quite some money that day, tipped off by an employee, and the only one who could have replaced the money with newspapers - hostage Pribil ...

While the showrunners have been the same since episode 1, and the supporting cast grew but was so far never re-cast, Lukas Resetarits is already the third (and so far last) actor filling the title role, and while Peter Vogel played him as a grumpy and fallible investigator and Franz Buchrieser gave him some suave charme, Resetarits, primarily a stand-up comedian, does an angry young man routine, which sometimes clashes with the requirements of the character, and more than probably intentionally so. Problem here is that when the main character is acted against character, he's no longer able to carry the thing, and thus this episode falls into too many parts, there's the criminal case (which by the way is riddled with plotholes), there's comedy played around Kottan's out-of-character character, there are irreverent sight gags, and while most of this is still fun, it doesn't fall together too well and really feels like a bit of a sketch show with elements of a cop show added only as afterthought.

That all said, Lukas Resetarits would prove very popular with his portrayal of the role, also because he led the character away from its roots as a parody of investigators in German cop shows and more towards their more action-oriented American counterparts that would gain more and more popularity in Austria over the 1980s.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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