Tatort

Tatort is a long-running German crime television serie. The first episode was broadcast on November 29, 1970. Now more than seven million people still make a ritual of turning off their phones and getting together on Sundays at 8:15 p.m. for an hour and a half to catch the show at home or in bars, some of which, “Tatort” hangouts, receive advance DVDs so fans can pause the action before the killer is unveiled and collectively try to guess who did it.

Over the course of more than 700 episodes “Tatort” has featured 70 detectives. There are common threads: They’re almost invariably glum, gloomy characters, mired in bad relationships or alone — in the end, ordinary people, which is how a country, democratic to a fault, tends to like its stars. In that respect too “Tatort” is notably German. From March 2010 until August 2011 I lived in Germany. Every week I have combined the title of an episode together with a picture of my shadow.