Polizeiruf 110

Polizeiruf 110 ("Police call 110") is a long-running German-language detective television series. The name refers to the emergency telephone number of the Volkspolizei. The first episode was broadcast 27 June 1971 in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), and after the dissolution of Deutscher Fernsehfunk the series was picked up by ARD. It was originally created as a counterpart to the West German series Tatort and quickly became a public favorite. In contrast to Tatort, which primarily focuses on homicides, the cases handled in the GDR TV's Polizeiruf 110 were more often crimes such as domestic violence, extortion, fraud, theft and juvenile delinquency, as well as alcoholism, child abuse and rape. Polizeiruf 110 followed a stricter police procedural format than Tatort, paying particular attention to the criminal's state of mind and the social context of the crime. Many episodes sought to promote particular social values. In 1990 the episode "Unter Brüdern" was produced as a crossover with the West German Tatort crime series, in which Horst Schimanski coworked with Hauptmann Peter Fuchs and Oberleutnant Thomas Grawe in a case of homicide and smuggling committed by former members of the Stasi. After the end of the GDR, the series was taken over by the ARD as a franchise similar to the Tatort series. The local members of the ARD produce their own episodes, which are aired by the ARD. West German settings and characters came into the show. Parallel to the Tatort series, the ORF joined the Polizeiruf franchise with its own productions. Consequently, those episodes are renamed Polizeiruf 133 because of the different emergency telephone number in Austria, while the West German emergency call uses the same number as the East German. The ARD's Polizeiruf deals mostly with murders and homicides, while the focus has been more on entertainment rather than...