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After one year of absence, Hasso Sandtner (Günther Ungeheuer) shows up at his wife Marie's (Luitgar Im) flower shop, throws around a large sum of money - even though he was a vagrant and alcoholic when Marie has last seen him - and wants her to drink with him. She throws him out though and then calls an acquaintance of hers, Wiener (Thomas Astan), who apparently has something to do with where Sandtner has been last year. Sandtner then pays a visit to some old friends of his, all vagrants living under a bridge, gets royally drunk with them and hands out quite a bit of money to each of them. The next day, he's found dead under the bridge, murdered. The police has no problem rounding up the vagrants, and it soon turns out the banknotes Sandtner has distributed among them were all counterfeits. From the vagrants, investigating inspector Köster (Siegfried Lowitz) also learns that when they parties with Sandtner under the bridge, an acquaintance of his has shown up a few times - Wiener of course, but neither the vagrants and the police know his identity. So Köster and his men take the vagrants to various racetracks in town to track down Wiener, who usually distributed his counterfeits by betting on horse races. One of the vagrants, Schorschi (Wolfgang Lier) actually spots Wiener, but rather than reporting this to the police, he gives them the slip and tries to make a deal with Wiener - to the same night be found shot dead under the bridge. Köster concentrates his investigations on Maria, who soon tells him about her own dealings with Wiener, and how he needed her husband, a talented artist when sober, to do the actual forging. She even offers to take Köster to Wiener, but Wiener has set a trap for him and ultimately knocks him out before wanting to escape with Maria and thousands and thousands in counterfeits, but then Maria shoots him dead to avenge her husband whom she loved despite everything and whom Wiener (of course) has murdered. Problem is, Köster's assistant Heymann (Michael Ande) has seen everything, and ultimately Köster can put the whole puzzle together.

Once again, Siegfried Lowitz delivers a great performance in the title role, one that alone almost makes this worthwhile. Unfortunately the same can't be said about a rather weak supporting cast, and a not all that exciting script full of somewhat clichéed and not very accurate portrayals of alcoholics, vagrants, forgers and the like doesn't help the episode too much either. Of course, from today's point of view, nostalgia sure helps to iron out at least some of the shortcomings of this entry, but good crime TV this is not - just a splendid lead handling at best mediocre material.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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