"Tatort" from Dortmund: Life belongs to the living

"You stay here, I promise": Those were the last words of Commissioner Martina Bönisch (Anna Schudt) when she was in the arms of her colleague Peter Faber (Jörg Hartmann) last year in the "Tatort" episode "Love me!" died.

From the first occupation of this WDR "crime scene" only he is left.

Faber is a tormented soul pursued by a nemesis, a battered detective who eventually recovered mentally and emotionally and was ready to love just as a stalker killed Martina Bönisch.

Faber, played impressively by Hartmann, who also wrote the screenplay this time with Jürgen Werner, changed – from erratic and unpredictable, always on the verge of suicide, to accessible, almost lovable.

What love can do.

In addition to all the hard cases that came from Dortmund, there was almost a happy ending recently.

But this took a brutal turn.

Tells around the learning spot

Well, in Faber's 22nd case, Bönisch is dead. "You stay here" tells the story around the blank space that the death of the commissioner left for all the central characters, including the police officers Rosa Herzog (Stefanie Reinsperger) and Jan Pawlak (Rick Okon ), leaves and concentrates on the problems of the bereaved in sad and nostalgic pictures.

This "crime scene" is atmospherically and dramatically condensed mourning work, not a crime film that focuses on the search for the perpetrator.

The first death in "Du bleibst hier", staged by Richard Huber, tightly framed by Hendrik A. Kley, is a possible murder without a body.

A real estate shark has disappeared.

Two liters of blood at the scene make survival unlikely.

There are half a dozen suspects.

There is the tenant in the Kreuzviertel who, after decades, is due to move out of her apartment because of the luxury refurbishment.

The abandoned wife plays a role, who under precarious circumstances takes care of the severely disabled son, because the disappeared was a miser.

Suspicious are all those who sit in the west quarter with champagne, cake and a perm in Martin Engel's (Andreas Schröders) hair salon under drying hoods from yesteryear, play merry widows and refuse to change.

Among the suspects is Jupp (Wolfgang Rüter),

who listens to records in his apartment, waits for "delicious food" every day and was attacked by young drug dealers in West Park.

A second man must have disappeared six months ago: the dealer whose ecstasy is responsible for the stroke that caused the son of the first disappeared to require nursing care.

Herzog and Pawlak investigate while Faber, who is on sick leave, lives in his Manta and grows his wood beard.

All three are struck.

Herzog's RAF mother has gone into hiding, the LKA is looking for her, Pawlak's drug-addicted wife is in prison, his daughter is suffering.

Faber recognizes in Jupp his father, who has been avoided for years.

"Don't get sentimental," Bönisch's apparition tells Faber less admonishing than amused in a quiet church scene.

Life belongs to the living, and in this Dortmund that means that the inspectors shake their grief out of their clothes together as drinking and dancing party beasts.

The clarification of the two cases without a body is secondary.

The living are more important, for example Faber's father Jupp and his dementia.

Underground, in the extensive system of tunnels under the West Park, the father-son conflict is cast in images.

Two men emerge from the darkness, their faces take shape and are illuminated, they have a conversation that has been overdue for years.

As recently in Berlin's "Tatort", it is the past, it is relationships from youth that get the mourning process flowing.

“You stay here” is dedicated to the transition and – not cheesy – to love beyond death.

For viewers who expect crimes and their uncovering from "Tatort", there is a solution at the end that has more melancholy than satisfaction in it.

It would have been logical to keep the rest of the thriller in limbo.

But obviously they didn't want to go that far with "You stay here".

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runs Sunday at 8:15 p.m. on the first.