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Irmi (Ursula Hufnagel), wife of Pankofsky (Paul Albert Krumm), owner of a highway rest stop, is found strangled by the side of the highway. Inspector Keller (Erik Ode) and his assistant Grabert (Günther Schramm) pay a visit to the rest stop to investigate and soon learn that Irmi wasn't exactly a faithful wife, much to Pankofsky's distress, and the day she was killed, he had a row with one of her lovers, truck driver Wiegand (Arthur Brauss), right there at the rest stop for all employees to see, then followed him into the parking lot, and was never seen again. Keller and Grabert pay Wiegand a visit, and when inspecting his truck, they find one of her shoes in the back - upon which he tells a cock-and-bull story about how he found her dead body in the back and just threw her out. Of course, this doesn't sound very believable, and thus Wiegand's arrested. And yet, something doesn't sound super right, so Keller and Grabert investigate some more, focussing on Pankowsky, even though all his employees, suspects themselves, insist he couldn't hurt a fly. As it turns out, Pankowsky has a water tight alibi for the time of the murder, so water tight in fact that he must have known he needed an alibi. It's only at Irmi's funeral when her parents (Fritz Schmiedel, Alice Treff) tell our heroes that she has been married before. And a bit of more digging unearths that Pankowsky and Irmi's former husband (Siegurd Fitzek) were not only friends, the former husband was also working as barkeep at the rest stop - and weirdly enough everyone else was unaware about his relationship with Irmi -, and he killed her with Pankowsky's blessing.

From a purely technical point of view, this is a well-crafted TV crime show with some decent performances - but frankly the plot just doesn't fly, it's too convoluted, requires a bit too much suspension of disbelief, and really doesn't make all that much sense - which is really one of the reasons Der Kommissar is so much fun to watch, as many of the episodes are so over-constructed that they really just break under closer observation. And the very stilted, unnatural dialogue doesn't fare too well, either, but is also part of the series' charm, at least as a fun piece of nostalgia.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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