Germany is the setting for this latest offering from Walter Presents. They always give us a fabulous variety of programmes, but there have been quite a few darker series lately, and ‘The Roots Of Evil' (Die Quellen des Bösen) certainly fits into that category. Don’t expect a cozy murder mystery – this is pretty dour viewing.
If you want to avoid all spoilers, stop reading this article now.
Set in 1993 in the former East Germany part of the recently unified Germany, Inspector Ulrike Bandow is summoned to investigate the death of a young teenage girl whose body has been discovered in the forest by another girl of a similar age. The victim has been put on display, like a sacrificial offering, on a bed of rowan tree blossom. And her body has been carved with symbols from an old Germanic language.
Ulrike (or Uli as she’s known) recognises some of the markings on the girl’s wrists as being similar to those on her one-time friend, Christa, twenty years previously. But much has happened in those intervening two decades. Whilst Uli has gone on to become a police officer, Christa is an alcoholic and married to local garage owner and criminal, Frank. To say that the two of them no longer get along is somewhat of an understatement.
And to complicate matters further, Uli’s brother, Marc, is seeing Frank and Christa’s daughter.
Assisting Uli in the investigation is newly transferred Korey Larssen from Hamburg in West Germany. However, in the traditional crime drama style, the two clash personalities initially. We also learn that Korey has something else going on in his life when we see him receive what is presumably a forged German passport hidden inside a book.
When the police learn that the dead girl was Polish and had gone missing from a care home some days previously, Uli suspects Frank of having something to do with it. Sure enough, when they visit his garage, they discover that his van has been used to smuggle people, and Frank is arrested. They also realise that the van had two occupants – so what has happened to the second person?
There’s some violence towards women and children (some of it inflicted by women), so be warned – this isn’t always an easy watch. And everything about it is gloomy and bleak. The scenery – much of it set in the aptly named Jackdaw Forest – is dark and foreboding. And 1990’s rural Germany looks grey with its functional architecture, colourless fashions and aging vehicles. But don’t let that put you off. There are some fine acting performances, particularly from Henriette Confurius, who plays Uli. She had a leading role in ‘Line Of Separation', the excellent and award-winning German WW2 drama from ten years ago.
There have been a number of series set around the time of the unification of Germany, and they’re invariably fascinating insights into Europe’s relatively recent history – and this would appear to be another excellent offering from that era.
Walter Presents: ‘The Roots of Evil' is available as a boxset on C4 Streaming now.
