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Once upon a time, Renate (Anaid Iplicjiian) and Rolf Assenau (Helmuth Lohner) have been world championship dancers, and they have since managd to use their popularity to launch a successful dance academy. And in tabloid land, they're a dream couple. However, of late they've received death threats, and one day when taking their horses for a ride, they're shot at - not hit mind you, but startled to put it mildly. They of course call the police, but there's little they can do considering nobody got hurt. However, investigating inspector Köster (Siegfried Lowitz) does find a few things that don't add up, that might put suspicion on Rolf Assenau. And indeed, the audience soon learns that Rolf has hired a hitman to take some shots into his direction to later murder Renate but make it appear as if he wanted to murder him. Thing is, the hitman, Bannert (Christian Quadflieg) has since fallen in love with Renate, confesses her husbands plans to her, and even though he first asks for money, he soon realizes getting into her panties is even easier and more satisfying. Still, he plays along with Rolf, but at the appointed location cold-bloodedly shoots him dead instead of her. Initially, Köster and his team are baffled, until they got hold of a tape of a talk show Rolf and Renate have been a month or so prior where Bannert is shown in the audience, so they zero in on him. When Renate learns about this, she gets him drunk then pushes his car, him in it, off a cliff and kills him - but by now Köster has found a tape that conclusively links his husband and thus her to the murder - not enough to have her convicted perhaps, but enough to have her live in fear for the rest of her life ...

It's hard to review an episode of Der Alte (its first 100 episodes anyways for obvious reasons) without praising Siegfried Lowitz' performance, so I won't even try: He's his usual best, reflected nowhere better perhaps than in his exchange with Johanna Baumann in the rather insignificant role as a cleaning lady, but she makes the most out of it and their exchange is comedy gold. In all though, this is typical German crime TV of its era, a horribly far-fetched plot, at best questionable police work, and pot twists that lead to the resolution of the case that are pulled out of a hat rather than worked at. In other words, not good crime TV, but enjoyable nostalgia at least.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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