TV crime thriller “Born Evil”: Animal rights activists with chainsaw in the forest

Hunters are always highly suspect in German TV crime dramas. The flippant saying "He has a hunting license" is often interpreted here as meaning: Anyone who shoots deer also kills people. In the Rostock crime drama "Polizeiruf ," two animal rights activists run into the forest with a chainsaw to cut down tree stands. They find a dead deer in the middle of the hunting season and become the target of the shooter. One is shot in the head, the other survives with serious injuries.

But authors Catharina Junk and Elke Schuch aren't particularly interested in German hunting. Under the motto "Born Evil," which naturally immediately raises a question mark, the series focuses on a young man who comes home bloody early in the morning, carrying a hunting rifle and a dead deer on his shoulder. His mother (Jördis Triebel), who lives alone with him in a house on the edge of the forest and runs a fish smokehouse, washes his bloody clothes. The dark, depressing images in his bedroom convey to viewers that loner Milan (Eloi Christ) has serious mental health problems. Investigators Katrin König (Anneke Kim Sarnau) and Melly Böwe (Lina Beckmann) learn from the head forester (Nicki von Tempelhoff) that Milan's father is a convicted serial killer. Talented Eloi Christ had already attracted attention three years ago with a similar role in "Polizeiruf." In the Magdeburg case "Black Box," he impressed as a young perpetrator after a traumatic childhood. In "Born Evil," he also plays an ambivalent character who seems both vulnerable and dangerous.

Alongside Milan, his mother naturally takes center stage. Despite all her doubts, she protected her son, who was conceived in a rape, but she comes under increasing pressure, finally unable to withstand it any longer and begs the police to arrest him. And Milan confesses to the crime. But there are still 40 minutes left to play, and one of the rules of German TV crime dramas is that the initially prime suspects are rarely the perpetrators. The script offers further suspects – all from the head forester's family, all with hunting licenses. His older son, for example, has been in a wheelchair since an attack by animal rights activists .

Psychologically overambitious “Polizeiruf”

But this psychologically overambitious film actually wants to ask whether and how traumatic experiences of violence are reproduced or even "inherited" - and in doing so, it resorts to a method that is unfortunately used far too often in television crime dramas. As if the way Jördis Triebel and Eloi Christ play out this conflict wasn't enough, no, in order for all viewers to truly grasp the drama, Lina Beckmann and Emilie Neumeister, as mother and daughter, have to repeat the same drama. In the previous case, "Thieves," author Elke Schuch already revealed that Melly became a mother at the age of 16. Now the whole thing is intensified: daughter Rose shows up in Rostock and is desperate to know who her father is. And during Milan's interrogation, Melly confesses that she, too, was impregnated through rape.

But this doubling of the conflict is so intrusive, artificial, and deliberate that it creates the exact opposite of what was intended. The scene could also be interpreted as: Milan, were you the result of a rape? Don't worry, my daughter was conceived that way too! And she still turned out to be a good person! Not only does this mirroring seriously undermine the current case, but there's a fear that Melly's coming out will also have a negative impact on future Rostock cases.

Police Call 110: Born Evil . Sunday, May 25, 8:15 p.m.