• Shadowplay, a miniseries by Måns Mårlind (The Bridge, Bron and Jour Polaire), will be broadcast this Thursday at 9 p.m. on Canal +.

  • This fiction follows a New York cop plunged into postwar Berlin without faith or law.

  • The starting point of a dark police drama, but bathed in light.

A double investigation in a ruined Berlin, divided into four sectors by the Allies. In

Shadowplay

, a miniseries in 8 episodes broadcast this Thursday at 9 p.m. on Canal +, Måns Mårlind, creator and co-director with Björn Stein of the powerful Scandi Noirs

The Bridge, Bron

and

Jour Polaire

, follows Max McLaughlin (Taylor Kitsch), a new cop. Yorker sent to Berlin by the US State Department to help develop a German police station, run by female volunteers. The starting point of a dark police drama, but bathed in light.

“In 1946, Berlin was the capital of crime, there were 250,000 rapes, 300,000 murders.

There are things that happened in Berlin that I don't even want to hear, like cannibalism.

It was too dark, even for me, ”says Måns Mårlind, whom

20 Minutes

met during the last edition of the Monte-Carlo Television Festival.

"The city represents the characters"

Max thus discovers a German capital in full doldrums, gutted by bombs and ravaged by violence.

“The city represents the characters.

I wanted to tell something about broken people, ”explains the director.

The perfect arena, according to Måns Mårlind, to tell "a story of life and hope".

Berlin in 1946 is a city composed of 92% of women, the men having died in the war or taken prisoner.

Women are on the front lines.

Under the leadership of the vice-consul (Michael C. Hall,

Six Feet Under,

Dexter

) in the summer of 1946, Max McLaughlin will collaborate with the new Berlin police chief, Elsie Garten (Nina Hoss,

Homeland) in

 order to resolve issues. atrocious murders and to flush out the Machiavellian the

Engelmacher

(Sebastian Koch), the "angel maker", a doctor with a troubled past, who seems to have a stranglehold on the local underworld.

Double-dealing

In this Berlin where the cold war does not yet say its name, all the characters play a double game. Claire, the wife of the vice-consul (Tuppence Middleton) hides a deep wound.

Karin (Mala Emde), abused by American soldiers, pregnant and sick, is thirsty for revenge.

Elsie tries to find her husband, a German soldier prisoner of the Russians.

Max also has a hidden agenda and at the same time is investigating to find his missing brother Moritz (Logan Marshall-Green), who hunts down unrepentant Nazis, using the kind of creative and brutal methods that showcase his origins. by Mårlind in Nordic Noir.

The names of these two American brothers, who were separated by the war, refer to the famous German children's book of the same name.

“I went to a restaurant in Berlin called Max and Moritz, and the whole place is covered with engravings and objects bearing their likeness.

The boss told me about this well-known children's story in Germany: two boys playing tricks on their village and paying a high price for their nonsense.

I thought there was a story to tell, and that became the common thread of this thriller.

"

"I was bored of this Berlin where the image is gray"

Over the course of the eight episodes that make up

Shadowplay

, Måns Mårlind lifts the veil on the shadows of the characters, in a summer Berlin, bursting with color and light, far from the usual codes of black Scandi.

“I missed this Berlin where the image is gray and where it is cold.

I wanted something completely different.

It was also at a time when you saw a lot of images of Syria at war on the news.

And then I read that summer 46 had been hot, ”explains the director.

In short,

Shadowplay

is an ambitious, sometimes tortuous thriller in which the shadow of the rise of the extreme right in Europe looms.

“This is the central point.

The whole series is built on what happened because of this problem, ”concludes Måns Mårlind.

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