Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Have you ever seen Cabaret and thought, “I like this, but I wish there was more murder, intrigue, bootlegging, and wide-reaching Soviet conspiracies?” Then Netflix’s new original series Babylon Berlin may be for you. The gorgeous crime thriller takes us back to a pre-Nazi Germany, where poverty was rampant and the nightlife was explosive. But is the show worth a binge?
Babylon Berlin: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: In 1929 Berlin — Thanks, Art Deco title card! — a bespectacled doctor-sort seems to be performing hypnosis on a man. Our first visual is of this guy’s hand in our hero’s face. He tells him to breathe in and out and then he smacks him upside the forehead. The whole thing is unsettling and leads us to a montage of confusing backward-moving memories: our protagonist walking through a pedestrian tunnel and coming to the surface of water for air, and there’s also dancing in a nightclub, a young woman “locking” her lips, a gunfight in a bar, a riot in the streets, and much more… It’s a disquieting prelude for what’s about to come.
The Gist: The guy floating through his memories up top is Kommissar Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch). At first glance, he’s your standard upstanding protagonist. He seems to be a moral, Catholic man from Cologne, who is only in Berlin to do a stint working with the bigger city’s vice squad. However, as it turns out, his interest in breaking up one of Berlin’s foremost porn rings seems to be more about his own self-interest than justice. The first episode suggests that Rath is actually on the hunt for some pretty incriminating footage — footage that could wreck his life.
However, Rath isn’t our only protagonist. We’re also introduced to the plucky Charlotte “Lotte” Ritter (Liv Lisa Fries). We meet Lotte as she’s sneaking home at dawn. She cleans herself up and gets herself ready to go immediately back out into the world. Rent is due and it looks like she’ll do just about anything to pay it. Lotte is one of the many unemployed young women who hit up Berlin’s police station for any bits of secretarial temp work. Lotte, with her coy smiles and bright green hat, attracts the pity of a guy on homicide duty. It becomes her job to catalogue all the photos of gruesome crime scenes. Rath and Lotte literally smack into each other getting off side-by-side elevators and their photos get mixed up, hinting at a partnership to come.
But that’s not all. Babylon Berlin is about a larger international conspiracy. The series opens on some Soviet rebels hijacking a train at the border. The train, chugging towards the German capital, is part of a daring and mysterious mission hatched by Trotsky supporters hunkered down in Berlin. We meet two of the conspirators — seemingly unlikely lovers Alexej and Swetlana. The two moonlight as musicians in a glamorous club run by Russian gangsters. The sense is that these three characters’ stories are set to converge in a big, violent way.
And if Rath’s early “flashback” is to be trusted, there will be some singing, dancing, and romancing — and some killing, brawling, and rioting — to come.
Our Take: We’re not sure if the folks over at Netflix predicted this, but one of its most popular niches seems to be foreign crime drama. Shows like Suburra: Blood on Rome, La Casa De Papel, and the internationally-set Narcos have won viewers over with their artistry and their grit. Babylon Berlin is the latest show to try to wiggle into this sub-genre. And you know what? So far, it’s pretty good.
The biggest thing going for Babylon Berlin might be its high-production value. Every shot is creatively composed, beautifully dressed, and most importantly, seething with historical accuracy. German auteur Tom Tykwer is one of the producers behind the series and you can feel his touch in both the show’s painterly color palate and its dips into the bizarre. Like a lot of Netflix foreign originals, the series comes subtitled or dubbed. I watched it subtitled, but the dubbing seems to be just fine.
Babylon Berlin has a fun, intriguing, artsy start and it promises viewers that more drama is due to come. But what makes it really engaging is how eager it is to show a different side of 20th Century Germany than we’re used to seeing. This is the last gasp of bohemia in Germany before Hitler and the Nazis rose to power. Babylon Berlin is a show about crime, sin, degradation, romance, and glamour. It’s a more freewheeling Germany, one with more sex and danger, and a lot less absolute evil. The setting alone makes Babylon Berlin a tempting binge-watch.
Sex and Skin: About seven minutes in, Babylon Berlin drops us into the middle of an unholy porn shoot. By that, I mean, we watch as a naked “Virgin Mary” gets taken from two different directions. Besides that, we get close ups of vintage pin ups and pornographic photo shoots, references to morning hard ons, and some gritty bathroom scenes. The show isn’t afraid to show smut as it is.
Parting Shot: After our Russian revolutionary friends cheer for the downfall of Stalin and the rise of Trotsky, we get a shot of the train chugging along the German countryside, a plume of smoke drawing a smudged line across the darkness.
Sleeper Star: Honestly, the most arresting part of the show is actress Liv Lisa Fries. With her angry doe eyes and earthy swagger, the German actress is absolutely mesmerizing as Lotte. Fries has the kind of overwhelming starpower that translates across the screen in any language, but Wikipedia tells me that she’s fluent in English and Mandarin. So if you want to place a bet on any actor from Babylon Berlin crossing over to Hollywood productions, put your money on Fries.
Most Pilot-y Line: Since it’s a well-made German thriller set in 1929 Berlin, Babylon Berlin leapfrogs over most pilot-y clichés. However, when Rath’s seedy partner Wolter is interrogating a suspect for some background intel on Rath, the man in question says, “You have no idea who you’re dealing with.” Wolter asks, “Who are you talking about?” and the implication is that our sterling hero might be craftier than he first appears. It’s a tiny bit over-the-top, just a tiny bit.
Our Call: Stream it! It’s a gorgeously shot, well-acted, and unblinking look at the bedlam of Weimar Germany. Plus, you get Russian gangsters and vice squad antics. What more do you want?
