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Father Krüger (Dieter Kirchlechner) has just received confession from a stranger who has admitted to a murder - but upon checking up on that story, he learns that the victim, Maria Dönhoff (Agnes Fink) is still alive. So inspector Keller (Erik Ode) and his team (Reinhard Glemnitz, Günther Schramm, Fritz Wepper) investigate, and find that instead of her one of her employees has been murdered - which means the killer might try again, which is why Keller and company keep a good watch on her. Now Maria Dönhoff is a rich lady living at a nice estate where she gives abode to a wide assortment of people, not only her son Benno (Ullrich Haupt) and her fiancé Sauter (Anton Diffring) but also her brother-in-law and hopeless accountant Wohle (Kurt Erhardt), and a high school friend of hers, wannabe scientist Heider (Konrad Georg). Thing is, none of these people like her very much, not even her fiancé, who has long found another lover and owes Maria a lot of money, or her son, who blames her for divorcing his father Harald (Thomas Astan). But naturally, none of them admits to the murder, and even when Father Krüger, who's bound by an oath of silence and thus refuses to point out the killer, pleads to whoever-it-is to give himself up, no one steps forward. And eventually, someone does shoot at Maria, despite police protection, and she ducks the bullets rather by mistake than design. The shootist is caught red-handed though and turns out to be Sauter - only his very cold nature doesn't fit with a man who confesses a murder to a priest. So Keller has some of his men wait with Father Krüger to see if the killer shows up again for confession - and he does, and it turns out to be Maria's ex Harald Dönhoff.

Frankly, several plotpoints in this episode are just too far-fetched to remain believable, starting with how can a man murder someone without noticing it's not his ex-wife? Also the idea with the confession to the priest has over-constructed written all over it. And why would someone who's not a career criminal, attempt to murder someone else while the house is swarming with police? Finally, why would the killer return to the priest after having confessed everything anyways, and how did Keller know he would? That all said, Der Kommissar was always a series known for over-constructed and not especially believable murder cases, often more carried by their eccentric characters than any shred of realism, and of course garnered by Herbert Reinecker's trademark stilted dialogue. And very often this leads to weirdly entertaining results - entertaining perhaps not in the intended way but entertaining still. However this episode is average at best and fails to really click. It's still worth some chuckles for sure, but nothing more than that.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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