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The lavish German detective series “Babylon Berlin” has required a lot of patience from American viewers over the years.
First, fans had to untangle dense storylines – set in the late 1920s and early 1930s – along with a plethora of compulsively watchable characters, most of whom harbored secrets. Then they had to wait years for new episodes. Netflix initially had the first three seasons, but they were removed from the platform this year. Season 4 aired in Germany and elsewhere in Europe in 2022, but these newer episodes are only now available for streaming in the United States, arriving on MHz selectiona platform specialized in European titles, on Tuesday.
This fourth season is “more music, more crime, more sex, more politics than ever before,” said Henk Handloegten, who created “Babylon Berlin” with Achim von Borries and Tom Tykwer. It also features more Nazis.
Season 4 begins on New Year’s Eve 1930, and German politics shifts into a higher, more terrifying gear. “Suddenly, our heroes are confronted with a completely new and deeply disturbing and threatening energy: the rise of fascism and the far right,” Tykwer said in a joint video interview with his two colleagues.
Based on a series of books by Volker Kutscher, “Babylon Berlin” places fictional characters against the backdrop of real events, so we know that Hitler’s rise to power will end the democratic Weimar Republic. The suspense of the season lies in discovering “how these characters we get to know react to the coming Nazi period,” von Borries said. “Will they be on the right side or the wrong side?”
Here’s a little refresher on where we left off at the end of Season 3 and what to look out for in the new episodes.
What will happen to Gereon?
A key character from Babylon is Inspector Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch), a World War I veteran who becomes a tenacious inspector in the homicide department of the Berlin police. Gereon is tireless and dedicated, and fundamentally believes in democratic values. He has been honest with communist activists and has befriended the sleazy journalist Samuel Katelbach (Karl Markovics).
By the end of Season 2, Gereon seemed to have overcome his post-traumatic stress disorder and come to terms with his brother’s death in the trenches, thanks to the mysterious Dr. Schmidt (Jens Harzer) — who may or may not be Gereon’s brother, and who embodies the era’s curiosity about new approaches to mental health, like hypnosis and psychoanalysis. Season 3 ended with Schmidt announcing, “We’re creating the human-machine. An android without pain and fear.” Ouch.
Inspector Ritter, on the case
The other main character is Charlotte Ritter (Liv Lisa Fries), a typist who has become the first female assistant homicide detective in Berlin. She and Gereon have a strong, mutually respectful professional relationship. Of course, there is a question hanging between the two: Will they ever become more than colleagues?
Lotte has an intimate knowledge of the city’s nightlife, and she loves to dance – going out with friends or even with Gereon, and earning extra money to support her impoverished family by doing sex work at the glitzy club Moka Efti.
In season 3, we started seeing more of her sister Toni (Irene Böhm). The two had a bitter fight and Toni ran off, but the relationship between the siblings, and the character of Toni herself, will continue to play out in season 4. In fact, that sisterly bond puts Lotte in a deeply difficult position at the start of the new season.
Law and disorder
Since both Gereon and Lotte are detectives and each season has a new case, we also get to know their colleagues at the police station. The most sympathetic and helpful is Ernst Gennat (Udo Samel), who leads murder investigations.
Most cunningly dangerous is the slick Gottfried Wendt (Benno Fürmann), a committed Nazi who monitors political groups and activists – beware of the man with the scar on his cheek. Wendt orchestrated the death of his Jewish predecessor and got away with it (although Gereon knows the truth), and he has become one of the show’s main antagonists.
In Season 3, the likable police photographer Gräf (Christian Friedel, recently seen as a camp commandant in “The Zone of Interest”) comes out as homosexual and begins a relationship with a journalist, Fred Jacoby (Peter Jordan); as we move into the 1930s, Weimar’s relatively relaxed attitude toward sexuality begins to change.
Money money money
In “Babylon,” the German establishment is represented by industrialist Alfred Nyssen (Lars Eidinger, recently seen in “All the Light We Cannot See” and “Irma Vep”), whose considerable fortune grew even greater after he successfully entered the shares had speculated. market crash of 1929.
Alfred has a strained relationship with his mother, Annemarie (Marie-Anne Fliegel), who thinks she’s an idiot. In season 3, he began to develop a close bond with Gereon’s former lover, Helga (Hannah Herzsprung), who is blinded by his wealth and unconcerned about his ties to extremist factions. Alfred has long supported Germany’s secret rearmament.
The rise of Nazism
In the first two seasons, the anti-democratic forces at work in Berlin were mainly high-level military men who dreamed of restoring the monarchy – note General Seegers’ daughter Malu (Saskia Rosendahl), a class traitor who is actually a class traitor is. left-handed.
In season 3, we saw that old guard slowly being replaced by the Nazi Party, whose paramilitary arm, the Brownshirts SA, began to cause chaos. One new convert is Helga’s estranged teenage son, Moritz (Ivo Pietzcker), who is closer to his uncle Gereon (Helga was married to Gereon’s brother).
Moritz seems drawn to the Hitler Youth more out of loneliness than ideology, yet there he sits, comfortable in a swastika armband. Who will his allegiance be to in season 4?
And his opposition
While monarchists, fledgling fascists, communists and the ruling Social Democrats battled for control of Germany in the first three seasons of “Babylon,” several outcomes for the country’s political future were still possible. As the Nazi Party grows in strength, it becomes divided by internal divisions, while the embattled communists attempt to offer a revolutionary alternative.
Chief among them is Dr. Völcker (Jördis Triebel), an activist doctor who fights against both police brutality and the Nazis while trying to help the poor.
Crime, the old fashioned way
The series addresses many different views on power. While trying to uphold the rule of law, Gereon and Lotte encounter the Berlin underworld as much as the Nazis or communists.
Kingpin Edgar, known as the Armenian (Misel Maticevic), owns Moka Efti and has been a taciturn, subtly menacing presence in the first three seasons. He is close to fellow mafioso Walter (Ronald Zehrfeld), who is having an affair with Edgar’s wife, Esther (Meret Becker). Gangland’s influence on Berlin’s entertainment plays a rather powerful role in Season 4.
