Babylon-Berlin.
A show by German director Tom Tykwer that combines the genres of detective, thriller, and melodrama and is done in an almost noir style. It has everything we've once heard about, like a magician pulling a textbook rabbit out of a cylinder, Tom Tykwer pulls out our own memories from the universal base of the "collective unconscious" by telling the story. Berlin - 1929. This is the time in which the most terrible regime in history was formed, but for some reason many people forget that even under this regime there were exactly the same people who lived in the same way like we do.
The period between the two world wars, known by historians as the Interbellum period, is a crucial and often even decisive period in the development of many countries, usually associated with serious social, cultural and economic changes. Of course, such a controversial period in world history is often reflected in popular culture, including such genres as television crime dramas. In the U.S., this period was the era of Prohibition, brilliantly reproduced in Underground Empire. The English had their critically acclaimed "Sharper Veils". Now Germany has its own TV project, masterfully transporting the viewer into the era of the "Roaring Twenties".
Communists, nationalists, prostitutes, policemen - a motley circle of glitter and poverty, where the latter is countless times greater than the former - people looking for any job, agreeing to anything, selling out without restraint. A nation standing at the very edge of a precipice into the abyss, but not yet realizing that it dances and sings in the last moments before the grandiose fall into the deafening abyss is mesmerizing.
This story is not so much about politics and detective investigations at all as it is about people. This series is like peeking through a keyhole at a life that was, beaten, loved and hated, but now remains only in old, yellowed photos and music.
The atmosphere of the era is something. I've always had a weakness for that 'golden age of jazz', as in 'The Great Gatsby', and with a European accent this era becomes even more appealing. Poverty neighbors with ostentatious luxury, gunfire in the streets makes you think of the trenches of the recent war, the rooms in the bars, where art is closely intertwined with pornography and prostitution, is generally delightful! Anyone who is partial to anything pretentious should take a closer look at this series.
Another plus is the wonderful actors. I've never heard of Volker Bruch and Liv Lisa Fries before, but they play first class, and just watch them enjoyable. I would like to give special mention, of course, to our actors who were invited to play Russian roles. The result is normal Russian speech, and not 'где ваши доказательства" (what's your proof - it became a meme in terms of voice acting for Russian). That's great.