“Being here now is a dream come true,” said Florence Kasumba, referring to the filming which has just ended for the new Tatort show, in which she is the first black lead detective to appear.
She stars alongside Maria Furtwängler, another famous German actress, with the two of them tracking down criminals in the German city of Göttingen.
Florence Kasumba (l) and Maria Furtwängler now as detective’s team
Kasumba is not entirely new to the cult detective show. In the past, she’s played a cleaning woman, an immigrant, and a barkeeper — all of them roles as a suspect, not an investigator.
Born in Kampala, Uganda in 1976, Kasumba grew up in the North Rhine-Westphalia city of Essen. As a young girl, she already knew that she wanted to take to the stage. At the age of 12, she played in the musical Starlight Express, and from then on, it was true love with acting. In Germany and Austria, she’s played in The Lion King, Mamma Mia!, West Side Story, and Beauty and the Beast, as well as in Elton John’s Aida.
Hollywood blockbusters
She’s been no stranger to Hollywood either, having acted in the blockbuster The First Avenger: Civil War in 2016, in Wonder Woman in 2017, and Black Panther this year.
Kasumba has played other roles in Tatort shows, such as this one from 2014
Despite her success, or perhaps because of it, it’s a still an honor to garner a leading role as detective Anaïs Schmitz in Germany’s longest running detective show, Tatort, on the air since 1970.
It’s a Sunday evening tradition to sit down after dinner and watch the whodunnit. There are also steadfast “rules” that apply for the show:
1. The opener
It’s 8:15 pm on a Sunday evening in Germany. Just after the evening news show, Tagesschau, the opening Tatort jingle rings in countless households across the country. It’s a melody that practically everyone — even those who don’t necessarily watch religiously each week — can hum along to.
Less well known is that the tune was written by Klaus Doldinger and has only been modified — every so slightly — twice since it was first heard when the show was launched in 1970. The accompanying geometric cut-out graphic screams “70s” and would make anyone cringe — if it weren’t such a classic. It has really been the only constant in every single episode since 1970.
Götz George, who passed away in 2016, played one of the most popular Tatort detectives, Schimanski
2. The tradition
1970. That means Tatort has been around for 48 years. The only show that’s had a longer run on German television is the so-called “Wort zum Sonntag,” or “Word for Sunday.” In Germany, public broadcasters are required by law to give the Catholic and Protestant state Churches a short but regular broadcast platform for a brief weekly message.
Tatort, in any case, is the longest-running crime show in German-speaking Europe: It launched in Austria in 1971 and has been running with a few interruptions in Switzerland since 1991.
3. Local color
Each week, Tatort is set in a different region in Germany. Sometimes it’s in Hamburg, or in Cologne or Berlin. But smaller towns like Saarbrücken and Ludwigshafen also get their turn on screen. In neighboring France, on the other hand, practically every crime show is set in Paris or Marseille, which has a reputation for being dangerous.
Tatort is a product of Germany’s federal system. Not only do various cities make an appearance, but the federal public broadcaster ARD is divided into regional entities and the production of each episode rotates among them. And, of course, they all take advantage of the opportunity to throw in a bit of local color. In the Cologne Tatort, for example, detectives Freddy Schenk and Max Ballauf never miss a chance to enjoy a currywurst and Kölsch beer at a stand on the Rhine River. In Dortmund, on the other hand, Peter Faber prefers Pilsner and French fries at the harbor.
4. The snack bar
Snack bars are as inseparable to Tatort as ketchup is to French fries. While the American officers in the CSI series (which, by the way, also mixes up the locations, even if there are only three: Miami, New York and Las Vegas) discuss their cases in bars, their German colleagues go to the local snack bar to talk. From bratwurst to fries and beer, none of them seem particularly interested in staying healthy.
5. Das Auto
Apart from the snack bar, the Tatort detectives also love to think through their cases by chatting in the car — Germans’ favorite means of transportation. While Karl-Friedrich Börne, the arrogant and overly intellectual pathologist in Münster, drives a sports car, Klara Blum from Lake Constance prefers a C-class Mercedes. Freddy Schenk from Cologne has a classic American car that serves as the butt of many jokes, while Peter Faber in Dortmund relies on his trusty Saab 900. The message is clear: Das Auto is not just part of the German soul, in the case of the Tatort detectives, it’s also a window to their souls.
6. The detectives
Various German cities are showcased in Tatort, such as Berlin here, with Boris Aljinovic and Dominic Raake
The Tatort detectives are a colorful bunch, none is like the other. Most, however, are more anti-hero than hero or heroine. They tend to be single-parents working through failed relationships (not unlike their colleagues in Swedish crime series); they have crooked teeth and bulging bellies and an embarrassingly awkward gait when chasing after speedy suspects on foot.
It takes just one glance to see that these characters would never turn up in American, French or Italian crime shows, where the detectives tend to resemble models and athletes.
Female detectives are well represented on Tatort and make up about half of them — without an official quota ever being introduced. Investigation teams are often male-female duos — and the vast majority of the detectives are well over 40.
7. Twitter frenzy
Twitter is not as widespread in Germany as in other parts of the world. But that changes each Sunday at 8:15 pm. As the old school jingle sounds, the Twitter frenzy breaks loose. To follow along, the hashtag is simple: #Tatort.
8. Share the experience
It was during the 2006 soccer World Cup in Germany that Germans started the practice of watching sport events in large groups. They even gave it a word that sounds like it’s borrowed from English: Public-Viewing.
Like a football match, Tatort has been enjoyed in pubs for many years. Drinking beer and speculating over the murder has become such a beloved past-time that some pubs even specialize in Tatort showings. Of course, even faithful fans want to complain about the quirks of the detectives or the style of the production — and that’s more rewarding when there’s someone around to agree with you.
9. The social dimension
Produced by public rather than private broadcasters, Tatort is not purely about entertainment, but also about encouraging dialogue over current social issues. Hot-button topics like forced prostitution, drugs, racism, refugees, and German’s asylum policies are often dealt with in the show. The pressing relevance of the issues at hand spurns the discussion on Twitter and in Tatort pubs. German talk show host Anne Will has a broadcast slot just after Tatort and sometimes picks up a topic related to the episode.
10. The Tatort seal of approval
Facts have to be checked. That’s not only true about the facts in Tatort — which aren’t always true (the public prosecutors keep at cases their real-life counterparts would never take on) — but also the facts about Tatort. A dissertation has actually been written about the representation of corpses in the popular show and a Tatort lexicon was published in 2010 — as a printed book, not an online portal. And that suits the nearly 50-year-old tradition nicely.
