“Police call 110: The fat man loves”
Deep investigations in the prefabricated housing district
“Police call 110: The fat man loves”: Inspectors Koitzsch (middle) and Lehmann (r.) during investigative work at the missing girl’s school.
© MDR/filmpool fiction/Felix Abraham
In “Polizeiruf 110: The Fat Man Loves” the investigator duo Koitzsch and Lehmann go on the hunt for the murderer of a primary school student.
Almost three years after their debut in 2021, inspectors Henry Koitzsch (Peter Kurth, 67) and Michael Lehmann (Peter Schneider, 49) can be seen in their second murder case. In the “Police call 110: The Fat Man Loves” (April 21, 8:15 p.m., the first) from Halle an der Saale, the two of them end up in the cosmos of a prefabricated building district where a girl was murdered. During the investigation, they look into many human beings Abyss.
That’s what “Polizeiruf 110: The fat man loves” is about
When eight-year-old Inka Werner (Merle Staacken, 9) doesn’t return home from elementary school, her desperate parents raise the alarm. The inspectors Koitzsch and Lehmann, who are responsible for the missing person case, initially approach the new case with very different moods. While Lehmann is confident that he will find the child alive and says prayers for her at the dinner table with his family, his colleague Koitzsch is plagued by cruel premonitions. In fact, the girl is discovered dead a little later in a neglected allotment.
During their further investigation, the detectives examine the social environment of the young murder victim and come across a long series of broken characters and tortured souls. As it turns out, Inka was a lonely girl who had no friends at school and often hung out alone in an abandoned hut in the nearby allotment after class. In addition to a group of homeless people who have also settled there, a sex offender known to the police is also targeted by investigators.
The inspectors also take a closer look at Inca’s math teacher Mr. Krein (Sascha Nathan, 46). The teacher, always sweaty and struggling with obesity, obviously had an unusually close relationship with his murdered student. The countless stuffed animals draped in his living room also make him appear in a morbid light. For the self-proclaimed vigilante group operating in the neighborhood, it is clear from the start that the child-loving teacher must be the murderer. The hunt for him that begins becomes increasingly brutal and vile.
In the meantime, Koitzsch and Lehmann repeatedly find themselves in dark dead ends with their investigative work – until they receive the crucial clue from a dementia-stricken grandmother from the local nursing home that leads them on the trail of the actual perpetrator.
Is it worth turning on?
Yes. As with the excellent opener “An der Saale hellem Strande” in 2021, “Polizeiruf 110: The Fat Man Loves” also relies on a pleasantly realistic tone and a measured narrative pace that accommodates the complexity of the individual characters. Once again, screenwriter Clemens Meyer (46), together with director and co-author Thomas Stuber (43), succeeds in telling a story that is exciting and profound at the same time. Since the case involves a sexual murder of a child, they inevitably serve their audience heavy fare that takes the viewer away in every way.
In addition to the true-to-life script, the brilliant acting performances of the actors contribute to the narrative success of this case. This is especially true for Sascha Nathan in the tragic outsider role of the fat math teacher Krein, who stuffs himself with food out of pure loneliness in his depressing prefabricated apartment and, in his loving interaction with his students, seeks a replacement for the family he was unable to found himself.
In their second case together, Inspectors Koitzsch and Lehmann also make an extraordinary investigator duo who thrive on the contrast of their characters without any artificially constructed conflicts. Peter Kurth, the actor who plays Koitzsch, who is driven by his inner demons, describes the relationship between the two in a statement about the episode as a “father and son relationship”. “The interesting thing about it,” says Kurth, “is that you never know who the father or the son is. Both are united by the unconditional will for justice. They just have very different views on how they can achieve justice.”