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Painter Gerda Brandes (Agnes Fink) receives a potential buyer, Dr. Bruchsal (Paul Hoffmann) in her luxurious country home - when they hear a shot fired. It soon turns out that someone has been shot to death, murdered, Andreas Haupt, who actually was Gerda's favourite model, and as it later turns out also lover. Inspector Keller (Erik Ode) and his men (Reinhard Glemnitz, Günther Schramm, Fritz Wepper) are called in to investigate, and they soon zero in on Gerda's husband Dr. Brandes (Bernhard Wicki), who has not only no alibi for the time of the murder, but also owns the gun Haupt has been killed with, even though it hasn't been found in his gun cabinet but his garage - and he claims he has no idea how it got there. And then suddenly, Brandes comes up with an alibi, he has been at a nearby swimming lake with his mentally challenged son Ulrich (Andreas Seyferth) and Ulrich's nurse Ursula (Gisela Stein), whom he later confesses he has an affair with. As she confirms his statement, Keller and company have no choice but to ... question Ulrich, who like his mother loves to paint. And among his paintings there's a picture of a gun. This triggers their investigation of the boy, who as Brandes claims does know how to handle a gun and has actually been near the scene of the crime when the murder was supposed to happen - upon which Gerda breaks down and confesses to the murder she committed after the deceased has broken up with her - and somehow she could convince their maid (Hilde Volk) to fire that shot when Gerda was with Bruchsal to provide her an alibi. And then Brandes himself confesses the whole story about Ulrich was a total fabrication, made up to force Gerda, who loved her son madly, to show her hand ...

One thing up front, Bernhard Wicki's performance is pretty much flawless, as he manages to make screenwriter Herbert Reinecker's incredibly stilted dialogue and also his very odd character motivations and unnatural actions and reactions come across come across as believable, relatable even. That said, as a whole the plot of this episode is just too far-fetched and overly constructed to really strike a chord. Sure, like most entries into the series, from today's point of view this one works well on the nostalgia scale, but great crime TV it just isn't.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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