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Babylon Berlin
Genre	Period drama Crime drama Neo-noir Thriller
Created by	Tom Tykwer Achim von Borries Henk Handloegten
Written by	Henk Handloegten Achim von Borries Tom Tykwer
Directed by	Henk Handloegten Achim von Borries Tom Tykwer
Starring	Volker Bruch Liv Lisa Fries
Theme music composer	Tom Tykwer Johnny Klimek Reinhold Heil Kristjan Järvi Gene Pritsker
Country of origin	Germany
Original language	German
No. of seasons	2
No. of episodes	16
Production
Producers	Stefan Arndt Uwe Schott Michael Polle
Running time	45 minutes
Production company	X Filme Creative Pool
Original release
Network	Sky 1, Das Erste
Release	13 October 2017 (2017-10-13)

Babylon Berlin is a German neo-noir crime drama television series created, written and directed by Tom Tykwer, Achim von Borries and Hendrik Handloegten, based on novels by German author Volker Kutscher. The series takes place in Berlin during the Weimar Republic, starting in 1929. It follows Gereon Rath, a police inspector on assignment from Cologne who is on a secret mission to dismantle an extortion ring, and Charlotte Ritter, police clerk by day, flapper by night; and aspiring to become a police inspector.

The series premiered on 13 October 2017 on Sky 1, a German-language entertainment channel broadcast by Sky Deutschland. The first broadcast consisted of a continuous run of sixteen episodes, with the first eight officially known as Season 1, and the second eight known as Season 2. Netflix released the first two seasons in the US, Canada, and Australia. The third season is scheduled to premiere on 24 January 2020 on Sky 1.

Cast and characters

• Volker Bruch as Inspector Gereon Rath, a combat veteran of the Imperial German Army during World War I and a policeman newly transferred from his home town of Cologne to Berlin, the capital. A Roman Catholic and family friend of Konrad Adenauer (the future West German Chancellor) Inspector Rath struggles with PTSD linked to his war experiences and survivor's guilt over the loss of his brother, Anno Rath, who is still listed as missing in action. Secretly, Rath self-medicates by taking morphine. He also struggles to reconcile his faith with his illicit affair with Helga, Anno's wife.
• Liv Lisa Fries as Charlotte Ritter, a flapper from the slums of Neukölln and an occasional prostitute at the Moka Efti cabaret, who works as a police clerk and dreams of becoming the first female homicide detective in the history of the Berlin Police.
• Peter Kurth as Detective Chief Inspector Bruno Wolter, a Berlin Police investigator whose affability masks unseemly tendencies. On one hand, Wolter shows great kindness to Charlotte by paying funeral expenses and comforting her when her mother dies; on the other, he threatens to dispel her from the police in exchange for sexual favors. He becomes the primary antagonist in Series Two.
• Matthias Brandt as Councillor August Benda, a Jewish Social Democrat and the head of the Berlin Political Police. A tenacious investigator and true believer in the Weimar Republic, Benda is equally loathed by Monarchists, Communists, and National Socialists. For years, the Councillor has been investigating a secret military buildup which defies the Treaty of Versailles. He believes that unless this shadow army, "The Black Reichswehr", can be stopped, they will overthrow the Republic and plunge Europe into another World War.
• Leonie Benesch as Greta Overbeck, a down-on-her-luck childhood friend of Charlotte Ritter initially recuperating from a recent Cesarean. Self-conscious of her scar, she turns down Charlotter's offer to join her working at Moka Efti. Instead, Charlotte uses her police connections to find Greta a job as domestic servant to Councillor Benda and his family. After a disastrous romance in Series Two, Greta reluctantly gets entwined in an assassination scheme.
• Denis Burgazliev [de] as Col. Trochin, a Soviet diplomat and official of Joseph Stalin's secret police. Under orders from his superiors, Trochin routinely masterminds the abduction, torture, and murder of both real and imagined anti-Stalinists among Berlin's Russian community. With help from Charlotte Ritter, Inspector Gereon Rath conclusively ties Trochin and the Soviet Embassy staff to the machine gun slayings of fifteen Trotskyists found in a mass grave in the forest outside Berlin and to the abduction, torture, and murder of a sixteenth Trotskyist found floating in a Berlin canal. Using this evidence, Trochin's superior, the Ambassador Nikolay Krestinsky himself, is blackmailed by Councillor Benda: although Trochin and his staff have diplomatic immunity from German prosecution, the Ambassador knows that Stalin will have him tortured and shot for having been caught. Therefore, the Ambassador has Trochin break into his own offices by night, steals evidence of Soviet collusion with "The Black Reichswehr", and gives the evidence to Rath and Benda. They arrange to release Trochin and his men into Soviet custody.
• Severija Janušauskaitė as Countess Svetlana Sorokina / Nikoros, a White Russian émigré, crossdressing singer at the Moka Efti cabaret, and spy for the Soviet secret police. The Countess is the secret lover of both Trotskyist leader Alexei Kardakov and right-wing industrialist Alfred Nyssen.
• Ivan Shvedoff as Alexei Kardakov, an anti-Stalinist Russian refugee and the leader of a Trotskyist cell in Berlin.
• Lars Eidinger as Alfred Nyssen, an arms manufacturer with links to Reichswehr and Freikorps officers plotting to overthrow the Republic and restore Kaiser Wilhelm II to the German throne. As expressed in conversation with Councillor Benda, Nyssen believes that the Republic is an aberration and that the absence of the monarchy is a disgrace to Germany. Benda says that Nyssen and his comrades are both Monarchists and anti-Semites who detest the ruling Social Democratic Party of Germany.
• Mišel Matičević as Edgar "The Armenian", the impeccably dressed owner of the Moka Efti cabaret, and the leader of organized crime in Berlin. A ruthless but deeply principled gangster, "The Armenian" claims to "own the police" and routinely uses intimidation and blackmail to get what he wants. For his own reasons, "The Armenian" acts as a secret protector to Inspector Gereon Rath.
• Ernst Stötzner as Major General Kurt Seegers, a member of the Reichswehr's General Staff and DCI Bruno Wolter's commanding officer during the Great War. Gen. Seegers has secretly been building a large and modern military for Germany through the use of secret military bases and armaments factories in the Soviet Union. Although Seegers' violations of the Treaty of Versailles are known and approved of by German President Paul von Hindenburg and "half the Reichstag", he routinely orders the assassination of journalists and investigators who get too close to his secret activities. General Seegers is the mastermind of a planned coup d'etat to overthrow the Republic, arrest all politicians expected to oppose its abolition, and to restore Kaiser Wilhelm II to the German throne.
• Hannah Herzsprung as Helga Rath, Inspector Gereon Rath's secret lover of more than ten years and the wife of his brother, who has been missing since the First World War.
• Anton von Lucke [de] as Stephan Jänicke, a young detective in the Berlin Police who has been assigned by Councillor Benda to investigate DCI Bruno Wolter for ties to "The Black Reichswehr."

Development and production

The series was co-directed by Tom Tykwer, Hendrik Handloegten, and Achim von Borries, who also wrote the scripts. German public broadcaster ARD and pay TV channel Sky co-produced the series, a first time collaboration in German television. As part of the arrangement, Sky broadcast the series first, and ARD started broadcasts by free-to-air television on 30 September 2018. Netflix purchased rights for the United States and Canada, where the series is available also in English dubbing and with subtitles.

The series is described as the most expensive television drama series in Germany, with a budget of €40 million that increased to €55 million due to reshoots.

Era

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, one of the show's co-creators, Tom Tykwer, spoke about the era:

“At the time people did not realize how absolutely unstable this new construction of society which the Weimar Republic represented was. It interested us because the fragility of democracy has been put to the test quite profoundly in recent years... By 1929, new opportunities were arising. Women had more possibilities to take part in society, especially in the labor market as Berlin became crowded with new thinking, new art, theater, music and journalistic writing.” Nonetheless, Tykwer insisted that he and his co-directors were determined not to idealize the Weimar Republic. “People tend to forget that it was also a very rough era in German history. There was a lot of poverty, and people who had survived the war were suffering from a great deal of trauma.”

In the first season, Communists, Soviets and especially Trotskyists play a prominent role (the Soviet ambassador to Germany from 1923 to 1930 was former Trotsky's ally Nikolay Krestinsky). The show is depicting of what became known as Blutmai, the violence between the Communist demonstrators and members of the Berlin Police in early May 1929, and extra-legal paramilitary formations promoted by the German army, known as the Black Reichswehr. Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler, on the other hand, is only mentioned in passing during the first two seasons of Babylon Berlin.

Locations

The Babelsberg Studio created an addition to its Metropolitan Backlot for the filming of the series and for future productions, in form of a large permanent standing set, lauded by the company as one of the largest in Europe. The set includes representations of various neighborhoods of Berlin, including the prevailing economic classes, and also includes the large exterior of the night club Moka Efti. In addition, the series was filmed throughout Berlin and at other locations in Germany. Numerous scenes were filmed on Alexanderplatz in front of the historic Alexanderhaus. The police headquarters, once located directly behind it, and other surrounding buildings, were destroyed in WWII, but were recreated with computer simulations. The Rotes Rathaus (Berlin City Hall) was used for most closeup scenes involving the exterior of the police headquarters, because their red brick appearance and architectural style are very similar. Interiors of the police headquarters lobby were filmed at the Rathaus Schöneberg, including scenes with its paternoster elevator, while the elegant Ratskeller restaurant in the same building was used as the nearby cafe Aschinger in multiple scenes. Interior scenes in the Moka Efti were filmed at the Delphi Cinema in Berlin-Weissensee. A lengthy suspense sequence set during a performance of The Threepenny Opera, was filmed at the historic Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, where the play actually ran at the time. Other scenes were filmed on Museum Island and in the Hermannplatz U-Bahn station in Berlin, and the Church of the Redeemer on the Havel river in Potsdam. The scenes set on the estate of the Nyssen family were filmed at Schloss Drachenburg, a castle in the Rhineland. Scenes involving a steam train were filmed at the Bavarian Railway Museum near Nördlingen.

• Babelsberg Studio in Potsdam
• Alexanderhaus, on Alexanderplatz
• Side entrance of the Berlin City Hall, used as Police Headquarters
• The lobby of the Rathaus Schöneberg, used as the lobby of Police Headquarters
• Hermannplatz station in Berlin-Neukölln
• The former Delphi silent movie cinema in Berlin-Weissensee, used as the Moka Efti nightclub
• Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, location of The Threepenny Opera sequences
• Drachenburg Castle in the Rhineland
• Church of the Redeemer at the Havel river in Potsdam

Music

In addition to period music, "Dance Away", from the 1979 album Manifesto by Roxy Music, plays occasionally in the background (adapted to the style of the period) and also included is an adaptation of "These Foolish Things" and, in the Season Two finale, a Russian version of "Gloomy Sunday". Singer Bryan Ferry of Roxy Music appears toward the end of the first series as a cabaret singer. In the first double episode of the first series, the Lithuanian actress Severija Janušauskaitė as Swetlana Sorokina, crossdressing as the male singer Nikoros, performs the main theme of the series, "Zu Asche, Zu Staub" in the Moka Efti cabaret. This song was later released under the pseudonym "Severija".

Future seasons

At the 32nd European Film Awards in December 2019, co-producers Achim von Borries, Henk Handloegten and Tom Tykwer stated that the third season was in post-production and that a fourth season is planned. The third season celebrated its world premiere on 16 December 2019 and will begin airing in Europe on Sky on 24 January 2020.

The third season was developed loosely around the second novel in Volker Kutscher’s trilogy The Silent Death. Showrunners Handloegten, von Borries, and Tykwer and chose to diverge from the source material to better address the social and political unrest during the time period as they felt that Weimar Republic is often overlooked by both media and historical sources. The third season is set in Fall 1929 around the Black Tuesday stock market crash and navigates the rise of the subversive Black Reichswehr and Communists political groups as well as the advent of talkies.

Broadcast

Babylon Berlin premiered in Germany on 13 October 2017 (Sky 1) and in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland on Sunday, 5 November 2017 (Sky Atlantic). The series debuted in Australia, Canada, and the United States on 30 January 2018 (Netflix). Broadcasting on the German TV channel Das Erste started Sunday 30 September 2018. The Swedish broadcast began on 19 June 2019 on SVT.

Episodes

The first and second seasons, of eight episodes each, were written as one complete story (covering the first novel of the Kutscher book series) and filmed as one continuous production. They premiered as one unbroken block, numbered 1-16, and have been broadcast throughout the world as one block. In addition, all 16 episodes of both seasons were made available simultaneously on Netflix.

The second block of 12 episodes are therefore officially known as Season 3.

Season 1 (2017)

All episodes were written and directed by Henk Handloegten, Achim von Borries, and Tom Tykwer.

Season 2 (2017)

The second-season episodes were written and directed by Henk Handloegten, Achim von Borries, and Tom Tykwer.

Critical reception

Following launch of the first season, the series received almost universal critical acclaim with an average IMDb rating of 8.5 stars and a Rotten Tomatoes critics approval consensus of 100%, summarising that "Babylon Berlin's humor and humanity pair nicely with its hypnotic visuals, resulting in a show that dazzles within its oversaturated genre". As of April 2019, Babylon Berlin was the highest rated non-English language show on Sky TV.

Carolin Ströbele of Die Zeit praised the show, saying "the plot is highly dynamic and unites sex, crime and history in a pleasantly unobtrusive manner." Christian Buss, cultural critic from Der Spiegel, praised the series for staying true to the tradition of "typically German angst cinema", in the vein of 1920s silent movies such as Fritz Lang's Metropolis or Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. "It could be that Babylon Berlin is the first big German TV production since Das Boot which enjoys really relevant success abroad. Let's not be shy to say it: we are big again – as the world champions of angst."

German historian Thomas Weber commented in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on 28 January 2018, "From a historical perspective, the series is very acute in showing how Weimar Democracy was under attack both from the Communist Left, as well as by traditional Conservatives, in a kind of unholy alliance." In the same interview, Babylon Berlin co-writer Henk Handloegten commented, "One of the main reasons to make Babylon Berlin was to show how all these Nazis did not just fall from the sky. They were human beings who reacted to German society’s changes and made their decisions accordingly."

Accolades

The series itself received several awards in 2018. These included a Bambi in the category Beste Serie des Jahres (Best series of the year), four awards at the Deutscher Fernsehpreis (Best dramatical series, best cinematography (for Frank Griebe, Bernd Fischer and Philip Haberlandt), best musical score (for Johnny Klimek and Tom Tykwer) and best production design (for Pierre-Yves Gayraud and Uli Hanisch), a special Bavarian TV Award and a Romy for TV event of the year. In the same year, everyone majorly involved with the production of the series won a Grimme-Preis, including Volker Bruch, Liv Lisa Fries, Peter Kurth, the three directors and several members of the technical team. Bruch also won a Goldene Kamera in the category Best German actor for his portrayal of Gereon Rath.

The series' opening title sequence, created by German designer Saskia Marka and featuring a theme composed by Johnny Klimek and Tom Tykwer, was named the best title sequence of 2018 by industry website Art of the Title.

In December 2019, the European Film Academy awarded the series with the inaugural Achievement in Fiction Series Award at the European Film Awards.

See also

• 1920s Berlin
• Roaring Twenties
• Golden Twenties
• Weimar culture
• Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980 miniseries)
• Cabaret

References

1. "Babylon Berlin - Stadt der Sünde - Staffel 3 ab 24.1.2020 auf Sky". sky.de. Retrieved 5 November 2019.
2. Berghausen, Nadine (February 2019). "A fascination with the past". goethe.de. Retrieved 23 March 2019.
3. ^ Grey, Tobias (28 January 2018). "A Hit Drama in Germany, Babylon Berlin Crosses the Atlantic". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 8 February 2018.
4. "Wladek Flakin: "Babylon Berlin" gets real". Exberliner. 1 November 2017.
5. "Babylon Berlin: Germany on the Brink". The Weekly Standard. 25 May 2018.
6. "A Hit Drama in Germany, 'Babylon Berlin' Crosses the Atlantic". The Wall Street Journal. 28 January 2018.
7. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 24 June 2018. Retrieved 24 June 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
8. "Metropolitan Backlot - Studio Babelsberg AG". www.studiobabelsberg.com. Retrieved 22 April 2019.
9. "Moka Efti: does it exist?". Retrieved 22 April 2019.
10. "Hungry? Have a quick bite at Aschinger's!". Retrieved 22 April 2019.
11. c:Category:Kino Delphi (Berlin-Weißensee)
12. ^ Scott, Sheena. "'Babylon Berlin': The Brilliant And Captivating German Series Celebrated At The European Film Awards 2019". Forbes. Retrieved 12 December 2019.
13. ^ Granada, Emiliano; Granada, Emiliano (20 December 2019). "'Babylon Berlin' Season 3: New Murder Mystery, Same Dark Fascinations". Variety. Retrieved 2 January 2020.
14. ^ Connolly, Kate (29 October 2017). "Babylon Berlin: lavish German crime drama tipped to be global hit". The Guardian. Retrieved 8 November 2017.
15. Antrim, Taylor (30 January 2018). "Your New Winter TV Binge Is Here: Babylon Berlin". vogue.com. Vogue. Retrieved 6 February 2018.
16. Sagatz, Kurt (17 November 2017). "ARD verteidigt Kooperation mit Sky bei Babylon Berlin". tagesspiegel.de (in German). Der Tagesspiegel. Retrieved 6 February 2018.
17. https://www.svt.se/kultur/film/serierecension-babylon-berlin
18. Goodfellow2017-04-03T08:58:00+01:00, Melanie. "Tom Tykwer: 'Babylon Berlin' could run for another decade". Screen. Retrieved 22 April 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
19. "Die Folgen zur Sendung - Babylon Berlin - ARD - Das Erste". www.daserste.de. Retrieved 22 April 2019.
20. Hawkins, Kayla. "The Creators Of Your New Netflix Crime Obsession Already Have SO Much More Planned". Bustle. Retrieved 22 April 2019.
21. "How the 'Babylon Berlin' Team Broke the Rules to Make the World's Biggest Foreign-Language Series". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 22 April 2019.
22. "Babylon Berlin". Retrieved 22 April 2019 – via www.imdb.com.
23. "Babylon Berlin". Retrieved 22 April 2019 – via www.rottentomatoes.com.
24. Ströbele, Carolin (29 September 2017). "Die bebende Stadt" (in German). Zeit Online. Retrieved 4 November 2017. Die Handlung ist hoch dynamisch erzählt und vereint sex, crime and history auf angenehm unaufdringliche Weise.
25. "Goldenes Bambi lässt Hollywood strahlen". B.Z. Retrieved 16 November 2018.
26. "Preisträger 2018 › Deutscher Fernsehpreis 2019". www.deutscher-fernsehpreis.de (in German). Retrieved 16 November 2018.
27. Krei, Alexander. "Das sind die Gewinner des Bayerischen Fernsehpreises 2018". DWDL.de (in German). Retrieved 16 November 2018.
28. Silber, Christoph. "ROMY-Sonderpreise: Schweighöfer, "Babylon", Ninjas & Universum". Kurier (in German). Retrieved 16 November 2018.
29. "Babylon Berlin (ARD Degeto/Sky)". grimme-preis.de (in German). Retrieved 16 November 2018.
30. "Volker Bruch bedankt sich für die GOLDENE KAMERA". goldenekamera.de (in German). Retrieved 16 November 2018.
31. "Top 10 Title Sequences of 2018". Art of the Title. Retrieved 5 February 2019.

External links

• Official website
• Babylon Berlin at IMDb
• official site of the Metropolitan Backlot, primary location for the show
• "Babylon Berlin – Our wild years" (An interview with Volker Kutscher) at Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung website
• "Dancing on the Volcano" at Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung website
• "Record budget for Babylon Berlin" at Spiegel Online website
• "Top event for broadcast, telecoms, media and entertainment industries" at Medien Business website
• "Filming by helicopter on 1 November 2016 for the Babylon Berlin crime series" at Woernitz Franken's website

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• 2010s German television series
• 2017 German television series debuts
• German crime television series
• German drama television series
• German-language television programs
• Das Erste television series
• Television programs based on German novels
• Television shows set in Berlin
• Television series set in the 1920s
• Television series set in the 1930s
• Posttraumatic stress disorder in fiction
• Grimme-Preis for fiction winners
• Neo-noir television series