Ein Fall für zwei: “Weißes Land”
“Broadcast Premiere:
ZDF (Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen)
June 9, 1995
Episode directed by Markus Bräutigam
Written by Markus Bräutigam and Friedrich Ani
Starring Claus Theo Gärtner and Rainer Hunold
Guest-starring Alexander Held, Karl-Heinz von Liebezeit, Paul Outlaw, Christina Schönfeld, Christian Tasche, Hildegard Wensch and Claudine Wilde
An Odeon TV production
”
(Above image, caption left) “Real estate agent B. Wallner is murdered in a hotel room. The prime suspect: her lover Anthony, whose attorney dies under mysterious circumstances. Dr. Franck steps in after some initial hesitation.” (Caption right) “Barbara (Claudine Wilde) is having an affair with Anthony, a sex worker.”
The original Ein Fall für zwei (literally, A Case for Two) was one of the most beloved German poilce series, with a total of 300 episodes in its more than 30-year run. The Season 15 episode, “Weißes Land” (White Country), was a bit of a departure in its depiction of neo-Nazis, xenophobia and a vaguely complicit police force.
“[Paul Outlaw as] Anthony Sono, in ‘Weißes Land,’ presents a more complex (and for some viewers no doubt provocative) character. Sono is a male prostitute who is clearly good at his socially unacceptable job, as we see in an early, very erotic scene when he meets Wallner in a hotel room. His manner at the beginning is candidly aggressive, as a result of his conviction that ‘The main thing against me is the color of my skin.’ Altogether Sono is not a figure to engender immediate sympathy in all viewers, but he is at least a provocative figure rather than merely another well-meaning, misunderstood foreigner stereotype.”
- Alan Cornell, “The Depiction of Neo-Nazism in Police Shows on German Television,” German Politics and Society