This is what the Munich “police call” is like: The inspector and the DNA dilemma

When Inspector Cris Blohm feels like she is “slowly becoming quite stubborn inside,” then she becomes dangerous. She gets pretty quick and stubborn too. That this is the case and what triggers her inner stubbornness, so that everyone who has had anything to do with her so far plays. And they disappeared, for example, to the Wokistan of the Munich University. Where she thought her head was bloody in the most wonderful way and became very, very stubborn.

Cris Blohm is still the new one at the Munich “Polizeiruf” station. Johanna Wokalek is Cris Blohm. And to a certain extent it continues a line of stubbornness. The previous administrators of the Munich homicide department were not suitable as easy-care role models for the senior police service. Matthias Brandt’s Meuffels and Verena Altenberger’s Eyckhoff were stubborn giants with particularly empathetic talents.

This may not be so far off with Cris Blohm. But in the fight for the Sunday evening crime detective stubbornness award, if this competition existed, she would at least be on the podium. The editorial team of the Bayerischer Rundfunk, which is very concerned about raising and caring for its commissioners, has so far sent them to the remote social areas of the Bavarian capital.

“Beyond the Law” now continues this field experiment and expands it. It goes from the bottom, from the bohemian world of amateur porn manufacturers, all the way to the top, to Munich Gold, where arms dealers turn the end of their sometimes blood-soaked value chain into crisis-proof reserves.

Everything begins like a textbook classic police film. A trumpet cries, a marimba claps as if on the bones of the dead. The screen is split (the opening credits note that Dominik Graf directed the film could have been saved at this point at the latest). Mia sees Mann and her therapists. You know each other, you know each other.

Mia (Emmapreisedanz is the hot heart of this “police call”) is the daughter of Munich Gold boss Ralph Horschalek. And she talks about Lucky and how he freed her. In his caravan at the social bottom end of Munich. He does porn. She joins in. Feels free, she tells her therapist, while the pictures (close-ups of her, of him, him from behind) alternate on the screen like photos in an album. The darkness within her, which she already had when her mother was not yet dead, she says, suddenly became light.

And then Lucky is dead. Lying in his trailer, handcuffed, with a broken needle in his leg. He has “abrasions” under his fingernails, says the forensic doctor. This is what “Beyond Law” is about. The forensic doctor is standing there, first shouting “Ha” and then “Shit”. Because she knows very well that Tobias Kniebe’s fabulous script has now arrived at its core. At the point that Graf and Kniebe are concerned about. Now unfortunately we have to get a little legal and therefore absurd.

A special case of law

DNA traces almost certainly lead to the perpetrator. If there is a match between the discovery and the test, the perpetrator is convicted. One would think. But there is a special case, and that’s why the forensic doctor shouted “Shit” into her laboratory. There is such a similarity between Mia’s genetic material and the alleged murderer that the father must be the murderer.

Since December 20, 2012, there has been a decision by the Federal Court of Justice that states that the Code of Criminal Procedure “only permits the comparison of DNA identification patterns to the extent that this is necessary to determine whether the trace material comes from one of the participants in the screening.”

Investigators and prosecutors are not allowed to simply compare test results that show a relative as the perpetrator in a DNA series test with their DNA. The protection of family members is such a valuable asset that this ruling was inevitable.

The poor forensic doctor knows something, but isn’t allowed to say anything. However, because the pathologist now gives Cris Blohm a tip that she is not allowed to use if she does not want her and the forensic doctor to lose their jobs, Blohm goes to a lawyer who she is sure is not exactly on the side of the case Police are standing. Afterwards, Cris Blohm becomes quite stubborn inside. And does what she always does – what she wants.

Dominik Graf, in turn, turns this case into a legal seminar what he would do from the Munich telephone book – a terrific police film. How many means can you work with, with which cuts, rhythms, flashbacks, image, tempo and mood changes to create and maintain tension, to distract and to illuminate social milieus, is something you can learn very well here.

“Beyond the Law” will be broadcast for the first time on December 29, 2024 in the linear program of Erste and will be repeated on New Year’s Eve.