The grimaces are terrifying.

They perform wild dances at the festival of nature spirits in Bregenz.

In fur suits and horned masks, they stamp their feet to the thump of the drums, you don't want to meet them in the dark.

But it is zappenduster, as it should be for a real spirit atmosphere.

Lisa Schwegelin (Anna Herrmann) sees the ghosts she did not call.

And she sees even more: a murder that has not yet happened.

She gives the police information for a phantom picture - of the victim.

A little later, Commissioner Hannah Zeiler (Nora Waldstätten) kneels next to someone who has been stabbed to death.

He is not a ghost, but Hubert Droste, the man Lisa Schwegelin saw.

Michael Hanfeld

responsible editor for features online and "media".

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For the inspector Micha Oberländer (Matthias Koeberlin) only two things come into question: Either Lisa is the perpetrator, or she has a screw loose. But would she incriminate herself before the act? It soon becomes clear to the commissioners that their visions are not without purpose. There they look at a second corpse swimming in Lake Constance. Lisa had previously been able to give the description of the victim, the crime and the scene of the crime again.

It has nothing to do with supernatural ghosts. There are very secular motives for the two murders and several suspects. They come in turn. Karina Droste, the wife of the first victim, has a liaison with a hotel owner and wanted to divorce her husband. In turn, he was responsible for the loan of his wife's indebted girlfriend at the bank in Lindau. And the second victim was just buying up properties on Lake Constance, with the active help of his buddy. That would be the first lead, which of course does not fit that the perpetrator is supposed to be a man. Could Lisa's brother Marco (Christoph Luser) be an option? He made a dodgy impression from the start, and he kept his younger sister away from the world on the remote farm where the two of them farm an alpaca.Her mother was in closed psychiatry and took her own life years ago. Lisa's friend Britt Köhler (Paula Kroh) seems to be her only real confidante. Commissioners Zeiler and Oberländer get a lot to sort out.

The supercooled and poorly empathetic Commissioner Zeiler is also suspicious of Miriam Thaler (Martina Ebm), the new friend of her colleague Oberländer. He had finally put her in prison for two years. Now the artist is inviting him to a vernissage at which no one else is present. And there he stands in front of a voodoo figure with nails in his head, for which he was the godfather. “You hit me pretty well,” says Oberländer, who one can have the impression that he is headed for many a misfortune with a good eye. Wouldn't your colleague Zeiler be right after all with her warning about her new friend?

The scriptwriters Jeanet Pfitzer, Frank Koopmann and Roland Heep unfold all of this routinely, although they are new to “The Second Face”, the fourteenth episode of the series “Die Toten vom Bodensee”. The director Christian Theede is also new, but he has a lot of experience. He staged “Tatorte”, two editions of “Sarah Kohr” and the “Denmark crime thriller”. The matter is grateful for the cameraman Lukas Gnaiger. He already proves this with the ghost images at the beginning, which we see twice - once in Lisa's vision, once with Inspector Zeiler, who is rushing through the scene and cannot prevent the murder with the announcement. So that a third crime doesn't happen, she later messes with the psychiatrist Rainer Sendlak (Götz Otto) who was brought in to deal with Lisa's case.

In this way, this story of the “dead from Lake Constance” is on the routine level with which the ZDF Monday thrillers keep their audience engaged. That doesn't knock you off your feet, but it doesn't fall away in the trained handling of genres and tension building and a good cast. And there is still something in the working relationship between Hannah Zeiler and Micha Oberländer. For Zeiler's current boyfriend (Christopher Schärf), the party is over. He brings breakfast, he brings dinner, while she stoically dismantles and reassembles her motorcycle in the shed. Apparently there was a problem with the circuit. The colleague Oberländer finally notices that the machine only offers space for one after it has been assembled. “The track is more stable with a solo seat. Too little freewheel on the drive shaft ",says Hannah Zeiler. And roars away.

The dead from Lake Constance - The second face runs today at 8:15 p.m. on ZDF.