‘Ein Krimi aus Passau’ – ‘Dark Rivers’ run (pretty) deep
Hager Moss Film GmbH and ARD, 2023
Q: What can be better than a crime series that makes you smile?
A: One when the greatest crime (against the genre) is that the sidekick steals the show.
‘Ein Krimi aus Passau” (in English, but not translated, Dark Rivers) is one made me smile, twice, and all the way through, on first viewing in 2023 and again in 2024.
In our household, we don’t often watch shows like this twice. We started a second time after confusing the dull English-language title for something else, and we started smiling from the outset. The German title misleads, too. It’s not one crime from Passau. There are four episodes of 90 minutes, with a single theme but a variety of crimes to solve.
Set in Passau, a pretty, and pretty dull, Bavarian city on the Danube not far from the Czech border, this story brings together two detectives from almost as far apart as they can be – geographically and culturally – in the German-speaking world.
The focus of the series is the back story of the lead detective, Fredericke Bader, not her real name. She’s from Berlin, street-smart undercover cop. Well, ex-cop. She’s now in witness protection after she testified against a crime boss from somewhere in the Middle East, but he could be from anywhere. His ethnicity is important mainly because it plays on the prejudices of viewers. She’s now living in this backwater, working as a factory quality assessor, and her nemesis has just got out of prison.
The sidekick, Ferdinand Zankl (such a great name!), is a supermarket manager trying to add spice to his life by undertaking private investigations. We learn – first from his accent, then in passing in the script – that he’s Austrian. He may not yodel, but otherwise he is as whimsical a caricature as you can find. And much smarter.
The final episode is what justifies the English title. It’s called, “The river is his grave.” And the Danube is a wide, fast-flowing river, pretty deep, but not deep enough to prevent the body in question being washing up on the shore several kilometers downstream. Whose body? That would spoil your fun.
What kept my interest the second time around, though, wasn’t just the fun, the smiles and occasional outright laughter the series generates. Instead – and the reason for writing this note – is the role that irony plays in building the fun, smiles and laughter. Almost every character is not what they seem to be. Even the ever-so-sweet lady who runs the neighborhood cake shop shows a determination of will that makes you rethink the stereotypes you bring to the story. Whether this is Socratic irony – the “means by which the pretended ignorance of a skilful questioner leads the person answering to expose his or her own ignorance” – or the more nuanced version we find in the writings of Kierkegaard (1841/1990), what’s certainly in abundant evidence here is the “incongruity” approach to humor (Morreall, 2020).
Even the ending – or is it a non-ending, a never-ending ending? – is incongruous. This is, therefore, a deep drama, well pretty deep, but let’s not spoil your fun.
Enjoy the singular “Ein Krimi aus Passau” through all four episodes.
Kierkegaard, S. (1841/1990). The Concept of Irony: With Continual Reference to Socrates (H. V. Hong & E. H. Hong, Trans. H. V. Hong & E. H. Hong Eds. Vol. Kierkegaard's Writings, II, Volume 2). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Morreall, J. (2020, August). Philosophy of Humor. Entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/humor/