The "Polizeiruf" from Rostock addresses the age-old question of the origin of evil. The chief inspector says: "Humans are also just mammals, but with weapons."

A picture like a painting: two young girls in a snowy winter forest. No music disturbs, even nature is silent. "Did you hear something?" one asks. Seconds later, the other has a hole in her head. A sniper has murdered Sarah Volkmann, who was working for animal rights activists. He also narrowly misses her friend. The car won't start, and she flees on foot. The perpetrator and motive are unknown. König and Böwe are groping in the dark.

These two dissimilar investigators – one too assertive, the other a bit distracted – haven't yet become a team in their fifth joint episode of "Polizeiruf 110" from Rostock. They don't talk much – and when they do, it's at cross purposes.

It takes an eternity and several tough consultations before they realize that the victim hadn't been traveling alone, and the friend in question, named Nele Schult, is finally identified. Just in time, they start looking for her. They find her, hypothermic and shot, lying in the woods.

Pure luck that she's still alive. At this point, the uninitiated TV viewer wonders: Wouldn't this have been quicker if they had immediately checked the registration of Nele's bullet-riddled car? It was parked at the crime scene, bright blue and conspicuous! And why hasn't the sniper eliminated the annoying witness long ago?

This isn't the only flaw in the script. However, neither the writers, Catharina Junk and Elke Schuch, nor director Alexander Dierbach are particularly interested in police logistics. The focus, in typical crime drama psychology, is primarily on the characters' familial traumas.

What's more, this ambitious episode addresses the age-old anthropological question about the origin of evil, to which Wolfram von Eschenbach hadn't found a clear answer in his famous "Magpies" example: Humans are both. They are half good, half evil, and have both white and black feathers.

However, before the realization takes hold among investigators and in the broken extended families, even among foresters, that criminality is not hereditary and that no one is naturally "born evil," a few more young people will have to die.

Eva Greuner (Jördis Triebel) runs a secluded fish smokehouse with her son at the edge of the forest. These two poor souls, too, mostly talk past each other. Eva, with all her love, is afraid of Milan (Eloi Christ) because he is the product of a rape and his brutal father was a convicted serial killer. She believes him to be the killer, but gives him an alibi anyway. Brief flashbacks seem to confirm her suspicions. The electronic horror music, which starts insistently whenever Milan enters the picture, also supports this.

It's laid on so thick that you immediately know: Guys, it can't be him. On the other hand, actor Christ, just 23, is a highly gifted actor. With his dark, mournful-rimmed gaze, he embodies both sides of the "Magpie" character so intensely—the lostness of the outcast as well as the anger at the normal people—that you somehow believe he's capable of anything. And finally, the actors! They save the whole thing.

Lina Beckmann, as Detective Inspector Melly Böwe, elevates even the most banal dialogue. When Josef Heynert, as Chief Inspector Volker Thiesler, halfway out the door, quickly cracks a joke: "Humans are just mammals, too, but with weapons," it says more than a thousand pictures. Anyone who's stuck with it this far should stick with it. The resolution comes with a crescendo and a double bang.

"Polizeiruf 110": "Born Evil." On Sunday, May 25, at 8:05 / 8:15 p.m., SRF 1 / ARD.