“Babylon Berlin” could be the next big German export

By C.G. | BERLIN

WITH flashes of drugs, nude bodies and partying, the trailer for “Berlin Babylon” flaunts the show’s sex appeal. Germany’s most expensive television series (it cost €38m—$45m—to produce 16 episodes) kicked off on Sky Germany on October 13th, and has been snapped up by international distributors such as HBO Europe, Netflix, Group AB and Telefonica, to name a few. But police and pornography are not the only realities of life in Weimar-era Berlin. Before the first few episodes are over, we glimpse smuggling, suicide, spying, betrayal and murder. Individual power struggles play out against wider political movements, such as the conflict between Russian Trotskyists and Stalinists, as well as the rise of National Socialism.

Based on the first volume of “Der nasse Fisch” (which translates as “The Wet Fish”, though it was published in English as “Babylon Berlin”) by Volker Kutscher, the first season is set in 1929, as the Roaring Twenties are coming to a close. It follows Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch), a police inspector in Homicide in Cologne who has been transferred to the Vice squad in Berlin on a secret mission. Konrad Adenauer, the mayor of Cologne, is being blackmailed in an “unsavoury matter” involving pornography which could jeopardise his re-election. Tracks lead to Berlin.

Rath is still haunted by his experiences as a young soldier in the dugouts of northern France and undergoes therapy. But his trauma is extreme, triggering regular epileptic seizures he can only control with drugs. It is a secret he unwillingly shares with Charlotte Ritter (Liv Lisa Fries), a young and beautiful typist in the Berlin Homicide squad, who finds him trembling on the toilet floor of police headquarters.

Charlotte has secrets of her own. She comes from a poor proletarian family and shares a tiny, run-down flat in the backyard of a tenement in Berlin’s working-class Neukölln with her sick mother, two sisters, morbid grandfather, a brother-in-law and a small baby—a situation she escapes by working long hours and partying. Desperate to make money for rent and her sister’s education, she sometimes makes a bit of cash working as a prostitute in Moka Efti, a storied café and dance house.

There is a temptation to consider the parallels with the German capital in 2017. The hippest city in Europe is enjoying a moment in the sun, but there is plenty of evidence of unrest, too. Rocketing rents and property prices highlight growing disparities between rich and poor. An annual migration of 40,000 people has exacerbated the dramatic shortage of flats (200,000 new ones are needed by 2030, according to a recent study by city planners). Along with that comes the massive influx of refugees in 2015 and 2016, rising numbers of prostitutes and homeless people, burglaries, understaffed police, run-down public schools and a general mood of uncertainty and frustration.

This was evident in the national parliamentary election last month, when the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party gained 11.4% of the votes in Berlin (12.6% nation-wide), a plus of 7.4 percentage points compared to 2013. The rhetoric of some AfD leaders, who will now speak in the federal parliament, evoked a revival of old nationalist aspirations comparable to those towards the end of the Weimar Republic. Henk Handloegten, the creator and one of the three directors of “Babylon Berlin”, believes that “for the first time since the downfall of the Weimar Republic, Germany is in a comparable situation. A growing proportion of the population thinks they have to stand with the conservative-far right on the fringes.”

Speaking to Die Zeit, Achim von Borries, another director, agrees: “When we started working on our series we still witnessed the aftermath of the financial crisis, which of course has historical parallels in the Great Depression of 1929. And now, we suddenly realise that democracy as such or the unity of Europe and the Western Alliance are up for debate,” he says. “The fragility of the Weimar Republic gains a new topicality.” The show is likely to capitalise on that. Mr Kutscher has written a total of six Rath novels, covering the years from 1929 to 1934, and is currently writing the seventh; he plans another three after that. The televised series should continue, he thinks, at least until 1933, when the Nazis came to power.

Shot in 180 days on almost 300 locations, “Babylon Berlin” is not only Germany’s most expensive television series but also its most impressive. Dynamic, thrilling plots and moody soundtracks capture the zeitgeist of the Roaring Twenties and of today. With such resonant and engaging material, a skilful creative team at the helm and distribution in at least 60 countries, “Babylon Berlin” has the potential to be the next global television hit.

Screening on Sky UK starts on November 5th, on Sky Italy on November 28th and on Netflix US in January 2018