The “thin blue line” was already a difficult catchphrase when Los Angeles Police Commissioner William H. Parker launched a television program called “The Thin Blue Line” in 1952, soliciting solidarity for his people – the police as a bulwark that protects society protects against anarchy.

The term made a career for itself in police circles, it is used particularly by the "Blue Lives Matter" movement, a counter-movement to "Black Lives Matter".

A blue stripe can be seen on flags and stickers.

And also outside of the USA.

Just a few days ago, police officers in Calgary were banned from wearing such emblems because they were perceived as racist.

The police officers who stand by the sign speak of a misinterpretation.

The “thin blue line” is a mark of honor for colleagues who have been killed and a sign of solidarity with everyone who is on duty every day.

Either way, the term "Thin Blue Line" is not unproblematic.

But as a title for a police soap from Sweden it is quite good - because it emphasizes the self-image of the protagonists and the dramatic social conditions at the scene of the action, and it is precisely the latter that this sensitive ten-parter, originally called "Tunna blå linjen", is all about particularly convenient.

A city with official problem areas

"Thin Blue Line" tells the story of six women and men who work as police officers in Malmö.

It is a big city with official problem areas, as is shown right at the beginning of the series, which is trimmed to realistic using hand-held cameras: the owner of a kiosk, who is being besieged by young people with a migration background, has alerted the police.

She is supposed to steer the recalcitrant kids who don't want to pay out of the store.

And that's what she does, badly insulted by the young people.

The scene ends with the sentence: "Do you have what it takes?" One of the boys filmed the operation, and it can be assumed that he put some excerpts on the Internet as "evidence" of alleged police harassment.

The abuse of the police officers, who do nothing more than their job, continues on social media - a motif

with which the series also emphasizes the permanent stress of its heroes in other missions.

We viewers get to read Twitter lines again and again.

There is not one big case that is told across all episodes.

Each episode consists of a variety of operations that keep police officers Sara (Amanda Jansson), Magnus (Oscar Töringe), Leah (Gizem Erdogan), Jesse (Per Lasson), Faye (Anna Sise) and Danijela (Sandra Stojiljkovic) in suspense .

“Thin Blue Line” comes back to some, but not to others.

Police are tasked with finding a 16-year-old refugee who ran away from a home and a five-year-old girl in a lakeside park.

They deal with domestic violence and the mentally ill who are suicidal, with junkies and victims of rape, with women being forced into prostitution, with protesters from the right and left.

These are just a few examples, the range is just as wide as the tempo in which "Thin Blue Line" describes the back and forth from one entry to the next.

The overwhelm that this everyday life means for the sympathetic heroes becomes all the more clear.

And the sluggishness with politics: a wall is set up for graffiti sprayers to let off steam, an intercultural greenhouse is opened.

But such flagship projects have come and gone in the past.

Some police officers have checked off the hope for better conditions.

Others don't: The policewoman Sara, who came to Malmö from pious northern Sweden, helps out in a soup kitchen ("There are so many coming. It never ends."), Magnus tries to form a handball team with problem kids, and the Jewish policewoman Leah ( at the same time granddaughter of the angry kiosk owner played by Jurek Sawka as a charming grumbler) throws herself into a new job in a poorly equipped district office.

The art of the series consists in the naturalness with which all this is unwound, in the unobtrusiveness with which it also looks into the private lives of the protagonists.

What is missing in the six episodes that can be viewed in advance is a problematic character that shows that, as we assume, there are not only role models in Sweden either.

But maybe that's expecting too much from a series inspired by the Twitter account of two police officers in Stockholm and the hospital soap, Emergency Room.

You can still get excited about this series.

Thin Blue Line

runs today at 10 p.m. on ZDFneo and in the media library.