Tatort
Tatort ("Crime Scene") is a German-language police procedural television series that has been running continuously since 1970 with some 30 feature-length episodes per year, which makes it the longest-running German TV drama. Developed by the German public-service broadcasting organization ARD for their channel Das Erste, it is unique in its approach in that it is jointly produced by all of the organization's regional members as well as its partnering Austrian and Swiss national public-service broadcasters, whereby every regional station contributes several episodes to a common pool.
| Tatort | |
|---|---|
| Starring | Boris Aljinovic Dietmar Bär Meret Becker Elisabeth Brück Hansjörg Felmy Ulrike Folkerts Maria Furtwängler Götz George Stefan Gubser Jörg Hartmann Andreas Hoppe Klaus J. Behrendt Harald Krassnitzer Manfred Krug Jan Josef Liefers Eva Mattes Oliver Mommsen Richy Müller Axel Prahl Dominic Raacke Sieghardt Rupp Anna Schudt Devid Striesow Simone Thomalla Ulrich Tukur Mark Waschke Martin Wuttke Wotan Wilke Möhring and others |
| Theme music composer | Klaus Doldinger |
| Country of origin | West Germany (1970–1990) Germany (1990–present) Austria Switzerland |
| Original language | German |
| No. of seasons | 50 |
| No. of episodes | 1,252 (as of 3 December 2023) |
| Production | |
| Running time | 90 minutes |
| Original release | |
| Network | Das Erste |
| Release | 29 November 1970 – present |
Therefore, the series is a collection of different police stories where other police teams solve crimes in their city. Uniqueness in architecture, customs, and dialects of the cities is, therefore a distinctive part of the series. Often, the city, not the police force, is the real main character of an episode. The concept of local stations only producing a couple of shows per year has also enabled the shows to be longer (90 minutes) and more fleshed out psychologically than other weekly TV dramas.
The first episode was broadcast on 29 November 1970. Episodes are broadcast on ARD's main channel Das Erste on Sunday evening at the prime viewing time of 8:15 pm (just after the 8 pm Tagesschau news) around three times a month. Reruns are often shown by various regional ARD stations and on foreign broadcasters. Alongside the member stations of the ARD, the national Austrian broadcasting corporation Österreichischer Rundfunk joined the production pool in 1971 and airs the program on its ORF 2 channel. Switzerland's Schweizer Fernsehen joined the collection from 1990 to 2001 and again in 2011 and distributes its episodes through its channel SRF 1 and Play SRF streaming app.
The series Polizeiruf 110, which was produced by East Germany's state TV broadcaster as a counterpart to the West German Tatort and has a similar regional production approach, is still produced by ARD's regional broadcasters Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR), Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB), Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) and Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR). Polizeiruf 110 shares the Sunday night prime time slot on Das Erste with Tatort.