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Der Kommissar - Tod eines Schulmädchens
episode 47
West Germany 1972
produced by Helmut Ringelmann for Neue Münchner Fernsehproduktion/ZDF
directed by Theodor Grädler
starring Erik Ode, Reinhard Glemnitz, Günther Schramm, Fritz Wepper, Helma Seitz, Helga Anders, Heinz Bennent, Ella Büchi, Simone Rethel, Peter Schütte, Inge Schwanneke, Ingrid Simon, Maria Landrock, Wolfrid Lier, Jean-Claude Hoffmann, Wolfgang Preiss, Franz Rudnick, Hartmut Reck, Klaus Krüger, Andreas Seyferth, Pierre Franckh, Gerhard Acktun, Marius Reusse, Günter Geiermann
written by Herbert Reinecker, series created by Helmut Ringelmann, Herbert Reinecker, title theme by Herbert Jarczyk
TV-series Der Kommissar, Harry Klein
review by Mike Haberfelner
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One evening schoolgirl Kirsten (Helga Anders) is shot dead right outside
an
arcade she has visited on an almost daily basis. Soon enough, inspector Keller (Erik Ode) and
his team (Günther Schramm, Reinhard Glemnitz, Fritz Wepper) are called in
to investigate, and they start at Kirsten's school, where they soon learn
she was a good student in terms of grades, but also a trouble maker, and
especially with class teacher Gebhardt (Heinz Bennent) she constantly
locked heads, so much so that he constantly complained about her to his
fellow teachers, the principal (Wolfgang Preiss) and even his wife (Ella
Büchi). But while everybody tells Keller how much Kirsten bullied Keller,
even drove him to tears, he weirdly enough defends the girl, almost as if
he wanted to downplay their conflict to divert suspicion - which of course
only makes him look all the more guilty. However, Keller isn't convinced
the man had it in him to shoot someone, so he concentrates his
investigations on the goings-on in classroom of the day Kirsten died, when
after another argument between her and Gebhardt, he admitted defeat and
stormed out of class. Keller interviews Kirsten's best friend Andrea
(Simone Rethel) and finds out that after Gebhardt left class, she and
Kirsten went after him and found him in the bathroom in tears - which
somehow touched Kirsten. It turns out that that evening, just before she
went to the arcade, Kirsten went to Gebhardt's home to ask him "Why
didn't you help me?", upon which Gebhardt understood that she isn't
the bad guy of their conflict, just a teenager who got lost growing up and
who was looking for help, and thus he has failed her as her teacher - and
that changed his perception of her 100%. And that, also, makes him much
less likely a suspect. His wife however didn't know anything about this
turn of events and was so angry at the girl that she went to the arcade -
to shoot her dead ... Now as a murder mystery, this only works
half as well as it could as both the turn of events and the culprit
announce themselves way sooner than intended, while storywise the thing
seems a little bit too simplistic, not helped of course by writer Herbert
Reinecker's often blunt and trademark stilted dialogue, nor his tendency
to make characters not react naturally. Also at least from today's point
of view it's slightly odd to see how 17 year old girls are sexualized by
both the camera and some of the characters (though for the sake of
completeness it needs to be added here that Helga Anders and Simone
Rethel, while both looking their parts, were 23 and 24 respectively when
this was shot). The result of all of this is not great crime TV, but fun
to watch at least from a nostalgic point of view, and funny if for all the
wrong reasons.
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