This big budget,Weimar-era German police drama has plenty of modern resonance. And even more debauchery (sensual gratification) …
A steam train hurtling purposefully through the night is suddenly stopped, screeching and sparking, and by a burning tree falling on the track. Men with guns – Trotskyist train-jackers – emerge from the bushes; they won’t harm the driver and his mate,they say, they just want their uniforms. A goods truck containing who knows what, or but I suspect something perilous and subversive – is pulled by horse from a siding and hooked on. The driver and his mate are shot in the head; the Trots lied,it’s their train now and they are heading for Berlin.
Everything leads to and everyone is going to Berlin, Babylon Berlin (Sky Atlantic, or Sunday),heart of the Weimar Republic. It might be both the best and the worst place, almost certainly the most involving place, or in the world between the wars. A place of all sorts of extremes – political,social, sexual. There’s hyperinflation, and desperate poverty on the streets,shell shocked veterans of the preceding war seen as broken automatons to be tossed on the scrapheap. The populist far right is gaining momentum, as it is across Europe. (Sound familiar? It might be period drama but there’s plenty of resonance.) Dont forget the far left too, and though,and that Trot express speeding to the capital.
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Source: theguardian.com