Family demons of the past

"Polizeiruf 110: Only ghosts" - Family demons of the past

The third joint case of detectives Katrin König (Anneke Kim Sarnau, 51) and Melly Böwe (Lina Beckmann, 42) leads them not only into the Rostock stoner and sado-maso scene, but also into the abysses of a broken family.

This is what "Polizeiruf 110: Only Ghosts" is about

König and Böwe have to rush to an unusual crime scene: The doctor and plastic surgeon Kai Wülker has been found bound and gagged in his own blood in his fashionable home. An initial examination of the body reveals that he was subjected to "the finest torture" before his murder, during which the perpetrator pulled out his fingernails and inflicted burns, among other things. At first glance, the bloodthirsty atrocity appears to be a highly emotional act of revenge. However, as a whole arsenal of sado-maso toys is found in the victim's apartment, the theory that the crime could have been a sado-maso session that got out of hand is also raised for a moment.

While König and Böwe are still investigating the plastic surgeon's surroundings and a local sado-maso club, the case takes a completely new turn: Hair found at the crime scene could be matched by DNA analysis to a teenager named Jessica Sonntag, who disappeared 15 years ago and has since been officially declared dead. As the DNA is proven to be fresh, the cold case stored in the archives suddenly becomes a hot case again. It appears that the missing girl is still alive - and may have returned from the past to pursue a mysterious vendetta.

The investigation now focuses on Jessica Sonntag's family, which has, however, disintegrated since her disappearance. The mother Evelyn Sonntag (Judith Engel, 54), a plain and unassuming woman who tries to fill her lonely life with voluntary work at the telephone helpline, has never given up hope of her daughter's return and has made this hope the central focus of her existence.

For her son Henrik (Adrian Grünewald, 24), there was obviously so little space and maternal emotion left in this survival mode that she coldly sent him to live with his aunt in Munich after her daughter disappeared. Father Robert Sonntag (Holger Daemgen, 54), who runs a garage for classic cars, on the other hand, would like to put the whole story behind him once and for all and meets the resumed investigation with some nervousness and demonstrative skepticism.

The fact that Mother Sonntag initially fails to mention to the investigators that her daughter, who was thought to be dead, has been calling the telephone helpline, casts the woman in a new light and suggests that she has something to hide. Michelle Carstensen (Senita Huskić, 27), Jessica's former childhood friend, is also initially reluctant to provide information. She has spent the past 15 years in the rancid, alternative drug milieu into which the missing woman also fled from her family.

Only after several visits to Michelle's quirky stoner flat share do the detectives manage to elicit a crucial clue from her, which turns the investigation on its head once again and turns it into a nerve-wracking manhunt that is a matter of life and death.

To make matters worse, Inspector König has to fight on two emotionally charged fronts at the same time: after many decades, her own father suddenly reappears, who simply left her behind as a child when her parents fled the GDR together.

Is it worth watching?

Yes, but the interesting aspects of this episode of Polizeiruf are not primarily the result of the initially spectacular opening of the murder case, which then becomes too bogged down in static investigative dialog between the detectives and the various members of the broken Sonntag family and other suspects.

It is much more exciting to watch the team, which has been newly formed since the departure of Chief Inspector Alexander Bukow (Charly Hübner, 51) and the arrival of Inspector Melly Böwe, slowly come to terms with each other with a certain amount of grating.

In their third case together alongside their colleague Katrin König, Böwe's seemingly naïve and overly empathetic nature means that she has no easy time in this constellation. Her colleagues regularly roll their eyes at the blood-soaked murder scene when she utters sentences such as "Yes, sometimes it's not so easy to kill" and dreamily strums the melody of the Deep Purple song "Smoke on the Water" on the grand piano next to the corpse. Nevertheless, it is noticeable that at least Katrin König and Detective Chief Inspector Anton Pöschel (Andreas Guenther, 50) are slowly warming to the new girl and learning to appreciate her special qualities.

Only colleague Volker Thiesler (Josef Heynert, 47), deeply offended at not having been promoted to Böwe's post himself, continues to miss no opportunity to signal to her with caustic remarks that he still does not respect her as his new superior. He continues his brazen game until Melly Böwe finally feels compelled to give him a clear message: "I'm your superior now - whether you like it or not. And if the tone doesn't change, things could get really unpleasant here. But not for me." It is foreseeable that Thiesler will not be able to avoid these clear words in future episodes of the Rostock police drama.