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Der Alte - Jack Braun
episode 2
West Germany / Austria / Switzerland 1977
produced by
Helmut Ringelmann, Hans Peter Renfranz for Neue Münchner Fernsehproduktion, ZDF, ORF, SRG
directed by Wolfgang Becker
starring Siegfried Lowitz, Michael Ande, Jan Hendriks, Henning Schlüter, Xenia Pörtner, Peter Bollag, Karl Renar, Günther Maria Halmer, Hans Beerhenke, Ursula Grabley, Udo Thomer, Peter Pasetti, Caroline Mahler, Helmut Pick, Hermann Günther, Margot Mahler
written by Peter Berneis, Karl Heinz Willschrei, created by Helmut Ringelmann, music by Peter Thomas
TV-series
Der Alte/The Old Fox, Der Alte (Siegfried Lowitz)
review by
Mike Haberfelner
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Hoodlums Braun (Peter Bollag) and Engel (Günther Maria Halmer) steal a
car from a garage, and as they drive through a quiet street, their
accomplice Krauss (Karl Renar) pushes a man (Hans Beerhenke) in front of
their car for them to run him over and kill him. Then they drive the car
back into the garage to park it in the exact spot where they took it from
and make sure there are traces on the car that links it to the crime. In
the meantime, Krauss calls the police and also serves as witness, though
claiming the man, Dieckmann, just ran in front of the car. The car belongs
to a prominent doctor, Margolis (Peter Pasetti), who of course rightly
claims that he had nothing to do with the accident, but when the press
gets wind of the hit-and-run, they focus on his "involvement",
and his reputation quickly begins to crumble. Inspector Köster (Siefgried Lowitz) doesn't believe in Margolis'
guilt, simply because the pieces of the puzzle fit together too perfectly
- what with Margolis having no alibi for the time of the accident and
Engel, a TV repairman by trade, claiming he had an appointment with
Margolis but Margolis wasn't home. The one weird thing is, Margolis' TV is
in perfect working order. Köster soon puts two and two together and
figures Engel and Krauss must be in league, and he figures Dieckmann has
tried to blackmail them, so he poses as Dieckmann's friend and tries to
blackmail them as well - which of course puts him on their hitlist, and
ultimately he's pushed in front of a car driven by Braun, and it's only
thanks to Köster's assistant Heymann's (Michael Ande) timely intervention
- he crashes his car into Braun's - that Köster doesn't share Dieckmann's
fate. The resolution in the end: Braun is actually Margolis' estranged son,
and he involved his father's car into the murder of Dieckmann as a sort of
late revenge ... After an actually pretty good and exciting feature length first
episode, this one hour follow-up is more of your routine TV crime
show - not a bad one might you, mainly because Siegfried Lowitz plays the
role with conviction and is really the heart of the piece, and his rather
eccentric and moody character with his often unorthodox methods of
investigation sure add colour to things - but on the downside, the plot of
this particular episode is rather far-fetched, with things seeming to
happen just for the story to move along rather than being properly worked
out, and some things just defy logic and reason. So basically, it's ok TV
entertainment for sure, but definitely nothing great.
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