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Annette von Söttingen (Ruth-Maria Kubitschek), a woman born into money, loves fine arts, so she goes to the opera at least once a week, runs an arts gallery, and tries herself as a painter - much in contrast to her husband "Monaco" Franz Münchinger, a police detective, who has no nerve for the opera and zero idea about paintings. He's more a man of "adventure", though not the kind of adventure his job offers - a job he describes as dead boring -, but adventures of a more romantic to erotic nature. So when he one day coincidently bumps into young and pretty Elli (Gisela Schneeberger), he's immediately taken by her charms, and for her it's love at first sight - but then they part without so much as to giving one another their respective names. Which means, this Friday Franz, with his sidekick Manni (Karl Obermayr) browse all the popular clubs to look for Elli, even if, or especially since this means ditching Annette for opera night under a feeble pretense. Now Elli goes looking for Franz as well, but once she finds him and Manni, they're already in the company of two other women, to her greatest dismay.

It's a week later, and Franz doesn't manage to wriggle out of opera night again - and what he dreads even more than the opera itself is the get-together with Annette's pseudo-intellectual friends afterwards, whose talk about what they've just seen might make him look stupid. So when Franz bumps into a renowned critic (Georg Marischka), he bribes him into giving him a preview of his review - and then pretty much dupes Annette's friends by giving them a detailed and pretty damning "opinion" of the whole experience. Much to Annette's dismay at first until she reads the critic's review in the newspaper - which elevates her opinion of her husband.

The next Friday, Franz is on the prowl again for Elli, and he has pinpointed the club where he might find her, a club she goes to as well - as indeed does Annette ...

Thomas Gottschalk, then still on the rise to becoming Germany's most popular talk and game show host, plays a night club bouncer in this one.

Now this is a series that has actually aged pretty well, as while stylistically it of course can't shake its early 1980s flair, its humour is pretty timeless, and well fleshed out central characters surrounded by some really good caricatures carry the thing in a way that despite its far-fetched premise remains relatable throughout. And the premise is just a wonderful subversion of German cop and crime shows of its time that very often has the investigating cop intrude an estate like Annette von Söttingen's (rather than marry the two characters), and how Franz describes his job as dead boring and mostly uses its resources for his personal needs is an added ironic twist. Another ironic twist is of course that Helmut Fischer did actually play a recurring investigator on the cop show Tatort from in at all 26 episodes from 1972 to 1987, with Gustl Bayrhammer playing his superior in both series.

So in all pretty good entertainment, even when not seen through a nostalgic lense.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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