Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Crime Scene Berlin: Nightlife Killer’ On Netflix, A Docuseries About The Hunt For A Killer That Terrorized Berlin’s Nightclub Scene

Joe Berlinger’s Crime Scene docuseries has generally done a good job of setting the scene for where its true crime stories take place. In its first foray outside the United States, the series takes a look at club culture in Berlin, especially in the city’s LGBTQ-centric clubs, and a string of murders that terrorized clubgoers in 2012.

CRIME SCENE BERLIN: NIGHTLIFE KILLER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A reenactment scene of a man mixing together a bottle of what is likely a lethal dose of liquid ecstasy, interspersed with scenes of Berlin’s nightlife.

The Gist: Crime Scene Berlin: Nightlife Killer is a three-part docuseries that examines a time period in 2012 where a killer was terrorizing the nightclub scene in Berlin, poisoning his victims with a potent dose of GHB.

Through interviews with law enforcement and prosecutors, as well as people who worked and partied at the nightclubs where the bodies were found, the show’s producers take us to the Friedrichshain district in Berlin, which has become a big party district since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. On May 5, 2012, a body was found at an LGBTQ bar in the district, in what was known as a “darkroom,” where people go to have anonymous sex.

The body had no ID on it, but through interviews with the people who worked at the club, as well as the victim’s workplace, he was identified as Nicky M. There was evidence that he may have been strangled, but very little DNA evidence was on his body. A toxicology screening during the autopsy found no drugs in his body.

However, once the identity of the dead man was found, his credit card was traced. When it looks like his card was denied, the card of a man named Miro was used immediately afterwards, to buy train tickets. We then hear from Miroslaw Wawak, who tells the story of being drugged the same night, though he had never even heard of the club where the body was found. His story, where he and this stranger he just met walk through the train station where the tickets were purchased, leads authorities to find CCTV footage of Miro and the person that has now become their primary person of interest.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? This is a continuation of Joe Berlinger’s Crime Scene series; it’s the first one that takes place outside the U.S. Berlinger, who directed the other three editions of Crime Scene, is an executive producer of the Berlin edition.

Our Take: What struck us about Crime Scene Berlin: Nightlife Killer, which is presented in a pretty straightforward, mercifully brief manner (each episode is less than 40 minutes long), is how utterly clueless law enforcement was about what went on in the Berlin club scene, especially in the clubs that were for “Queer & Friends”, as the sign on Grosse Freiheit, where the first body was found, indicated. Remember, this took place in 2012; it’s a shock that the Berlin police didn’t have someone with knowledge of what went on in darkrooms and what the drug culture in those clubs might have been. The coroner that’s interviewed admitted that GHB wasn’t even part of their standard toxicology screening during autopsies back then.

Still, what the show’s producers are concentrating on is that law enforcement somehow managed to narrow their focus relatively quickly. But, given that the killer managed to kill one person and almost kill another within the span of a couple of hours, they knew they had to work fast. One thing that gave them a whole lot of information is that they actually found a surviving victim. When you have someone who can talk about what happened to them and describe who they were with, even if the memories are hazy, it opens up a whole bunch of avenues for the cops to look into.

The first episode only sort of acknowledges this. They give Miro, the victim who survived, plenty of time to tell his story, but it still feels like the cops are portrayed as the geniuses. It feels somewhat one-sided, but given the concentration of the series on the evidence gathered, maybe that was an inevitable result.

Sex and Skin: Discussions about what goes on in those clubs, but that’s about it.

Parting Shot: A reenacted statement from the killer, saying in voice over that “I’m in despair, because I’m scared of my own actions.”

Sleeper Star: Nicky’s sister Anka Hilgert, as you would expect, has the most personal connection to the case, and the hurt in her eyes as she describes the call she got about his death is palpable.

Most Pilot-y Line: The interviews are shot from below the interviewees’ eye level, with the interviewer being down at that lower level, as well. It’s an effect that’s supposed to make things look more ominous, but it’s just distracting.

Our Call: STREAM IT. There were some parts of Crime Scene Berlin: Nightlife Killer that we wished got some more time, like the general cluelessness from the cops about LGBTQ club culture, but the show’s brief running time and straightforward storytelling is a good trade-off for the lack of self-examination.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.