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In a lake in a Munich park, a man is found dead, drowned and robbed blind, and apparently before his death he got drunk to the hilt. Inspector Keller (Erik Ode) and his assistants Heines (Reinhard Glemnitz), Grabert (Günther Schramm) and Harry (Fritz Wepper) investigate, and while the assistants try to find out where the deceased got drunk, Keller concentrates his attention on a quintet of bum-like pensioners (Hans Schweikart, Albert Hörrmann, Karl Hellmer, Erik Dorner, Kurt Grundmann), who terrrorize the park, often accompanied by a four year old boy (Thomas Ohrner, still a decade away from becoming a teen superstar with series like Timm Thaler and Manni der Libero), and who Keller's soon sure have killed the man. Meanwhile, his assistants find out that the dead man has gotten drunk at the pub run by Panse (Dirk Dautzenberg), but Panse is weirdly reluctant to help the police and also tries to shut up his girlfriend Hilde (Anita Höfer) and his daughter Herta (Helga Anders). It's interesting though that the boy who's usually with the pensioners is actually Hilde's son, but not with Panse but with derelict Wegsteiner (Karl Walter Diess), who comes to Panse's pub every day but is usually denied service. To crack the case, Harry is instructed to pick up and charm 17 year old Herta (a scene creepy not only from today's point of view), and it works so well that she wants to move in with him in no time. But it's really what she tells Harry that's interesting, that Hilde had a little side business welcoming men into a backroom now and again, and she actually wanted to run away with the deceased. So Keller reconstructs the case, that Wegsteiner was so overcome by jealousy that he lured the deceased, who was dead drunk, over to the bullying pensioners, who ... and to prove they did it, Keller sends one of his men (Mogens von Gadow) to the park pretending to be dead drunk, and the pensioners fall for it hook, line and sinker and try to kill him as well ...

To say this episode is a bit far-fetched is a bit of an understatement even if it does its best to hide this fact under a multi-layered plot. Now the gang of the bullying pensioners is really a re-hash from an earlier episode, Ratten der Grossstadt (even if the bullies were day labourers in that one), but that their dialogue has hints of Waiting for Godot is a nice touch. In all, it's an episode that has everything one would expect from the series, a convoluted story, stilted dialogue, eccentric characters, and certain stabs at realism undermined by a not exactly believable plot. So it's fun, especially from a nostalgic point of view, if not exactly great cop TV.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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