Murder dramas are everywhere, but this meticulous German one is outstanding

The Black Forest Murders ★★★★

There are no sirens. Adapted from real-life events, this German crime drama operates with a quiet urgency. The momentum is constant, as detectives in the country’s rural south attempt to solve the horrifying murder of a young woman, even as circumstances escalate, but the focus is their meticulous, unrelenting investigation. There are no grand deductive leaps, no cat-and-mouse interviews with a prime suspect. This is a gripping procedural founded on detail and diligence.

“The odds are in our favour,” reasons police detective Thomas Reidle (Tilman Strauss) to his senior partner, Barbara Kruger (Nina Kunzendorf), after they have begun investigating the murder of Stefanie Burghoff (Lara Kimpel), a jogger who never returned from her weekend run through the village’s rolling hills and vineyards.

But his optimism is difficult to maintain, and this show emphasises the tenaciousness – to spot gaps, make difficult requests, motivate tiring officers – that is required. The case is like the jigsaw on Kruger’s dinner table: 1000 tiny unsolved pieces.

The four episodes of this limited series were adapted from Soko Erle, a 2016 non-fiction book by police officer Walter Roth, who worked as the media liaison officer on a taskforce assembled to investigate a prominent murder. The show’s writers, Robert Hummel and Martina Mouchot, have changed names and circumstances from the book, to avoid directly reminding the victim’s family and their community of what transpired, but they have kept the granular steps the police went through.

Early on, as the case’s scope widens after there’s no immediate resolution, database scans are assigned. But a junior officer points out a problem they have to get around: the various German states use different IT systems, and they’re not all readily compatible. At various points the authorities have nothing new to work on, so they have to go back and redo previous steps, hoping something was overlooked. You watch as officers examine a hedge with magnifying glasses, looking for minute traces.

Given the literally microscopic detail, when progress is made it’s thrilling. Murder dramas are ubiquitous on our screens, but as with Netflix’s outstanding Swedish series The Breakthrough, the day-to-day persistence here is fascinating. Kruger and Reidle take shape through the prosaic reality of their work: professional, but never impersonal. Their outside lives seep in via unorthodox but plausible means. At one point Reidle, who has a growing family, casually asks Kruger if her widowed father is looking to sell his house.

Early on, the local community deluges the taskforce offices with free food, only for the gifts to dry up as the investigation gets bogged down. The relationship between the officers and the villagers, in a locale where nearly everyone knows nearly everyone else, is a telling focus throughout. Early on, one officer, Bernd Klingspor (Bozidar Kocevski), insists Stefanie’s husband, Tobias (David Richter), cannot be a suspect simply because he’s a good guy. When Reidle has to ask difficult questions of people Tobias is friendly with, the effect is excruciating.

The investigation also paints a broader picture of fractures within German society, but what endures is how this mystery is solved with one tiny chip after another in the case’s vast wall. Director Stefan Krohmer is very good at capturing the office conversations and sterilised lab work that goes on week after week, but there are shots that capture the struggle in emblematic ways. On the first evening Stefanie is missing, a long shot captures villagers with torches scouring a hillside. So many tiny, distant beams struggling to cut through the darkness. That’s The Black Forest Murders.

The Black Forest Murders is now streaming on SBS on Demand.

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