August 27, 2009

A Popular German Crime Drama

Michael Kimmelman examines the popular German police drama Tatort (Crime Scene) for the New York Times here. Notes Mr. Kimmelman,

“Tatort” is a little akin to what Johnny Carson's “Tonight Show” was in America. It’s one of those modest pop-culture symbols and long-standing common experiences that can be hard for outsiders to translate but that speak to, and of, a nation. First broadcast in 1970, before video games or food processors and when Germany seemed permanently split in two, the show adopted the age-old formula of a pair of detectives solving a murder to devise a distinctly German version of the crime drama.

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