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Böwe (Lina Beckmann, left) and König (Anneke Kim Sarnau): “I’m going away.”

Photo: Christine Schroeder / NDR

The scenario:

Heroin syringes and soap bubbles.

A junkie mother (Meira Durand) takes out drunks in bars with her daughter: Mom dances at the guys, the little girl blows bubbles in their faces and steals their wallets.

After one of their raids, mother and daughter go into a villa where there is a corpse.

The dead woman was a retired business journalist who had her sights set on a bad real estate fund.

Inspector Böwe (Lina Beckmann) takes over the investigation and - given the cold-hearted investment advisors and pension fraudsters who have to be questioned - develops a risky closeness to the junkie's mother.

That can't happen to colleague König (Anneke Kim Sarnau): she's currently harboring a huge grudge against her scrounger father and the rest of humanity.

The highlight:

Parents as a nightmare.

Two difficult family relationships are reflected on two narrative axes: here the addicted mother who drags her five-year-old daughter into her misery.

There is Inspector König's father, who has been in hiding for decades, begging his 50-year-old daughter for love and money.

The personal catastrophes are delicately staged - the not very original criminal case seems all the more clunky.

The picture:

The rainbow in the puddle.

The junkie mother, high on heroin, stumbles into the gutter in front of her daughter, and the street lights are reflected in the water in the most beautiful colors.

From somewhere, a voice breathes the Judy Garland classic “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

The dialogue:

König, Böwe and colleague Thiesler (Josef Heynert) at the crime scene.

Böwe: »The order here is strange.

It’s all tidied up perfectly.”

Thiesler: “Yes, yes, older women tend to have a special sense of order.”

King: “Attention!

Now comes Volker’s secret knowledge about older women.”

Thiesler: “Sorry, I really didn’t mean to mansplain here.

You two know each other better then.”

The song:

"Face to the Highway" by Tom Waits.

The song plays as King exchanges a first and possibly last hug with her father.

For the solo warrior König, such an embrace feels like an awkward, distant cultural technique.

And Waits whispers mercilessly: “I’m going away.”

The review:

6 out of 10 points.

Strong images, weak plot: This “police call” is more for the mind than for the mind.

The analysis:

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“Police call 110: Thieves

,” Sunday, 8:15 p.m., Das Erste