ZDF is drawing a line under one of its oldest Friday crime shows: 'Ein Fall für zwei' will be discontinued after 46 years. The final season with four episodes will air next year, after which a 90-minute feature film will round out the series, to be shot in 2027. The Mainz-based broadcaster confirmed this upon request from news agency spot on news.
The series has shaped ZDF's Friday crime slot for more than four decades and accompanied generations of viewers, the statement says. This makes the decision to end the series, made after careful consideration, all the more difficult. The broadcaster's thanks go to the entire team as well as lead actors Antoine Monot, Wanja Mues and Bettina Zimmermann for their years of work.
In the buddy series, Mues portrays private detective Leo Oswald, Monot plays attorney Benjamin 'Benni' Hornberg. The two could hardly be more different, and yet they share a close friendship. Oswald investigates on behalf of the attorney, and their findings regularly amaze prosecutor Claudia Strauss (Bettina Zimmermann). This team has been in action since 2014. After the upcoming twelfth season, the thirteenth will follow next year, and later the film.
Four Cases Before the Finale
Starting in September, the twelfth season brings four new episodes, which ZDF will also show in advance on its streaming portal, according to its own announcement. The opener is 'Millionär für eine Nacht', in which a businessman wakes up with the murder weapon in his hand after an escalated limousine ride. In 'Drei Mütter', a woman is supposed to have killed her own sister, while a custody dispute overshadows the investigation.
'Größenwahn' leads Oswald and Hornberg to a dead motivational coach who died while climbing in the Taunus mountains and left behind numerous enemies. And in 'Dunkle Schatten', a woman comes under suspicion of having killed her husband, behind whose facade lies a long-kept secret.
The series began on September 11, 1981. In the episode 'Die große Schwester', Josef Matula (Claus Theo Gärtner) was initially seen as a Frankfurt police officer who met his future partner, attorney Dieter Renz (Günter Strack), in court. Matula quickly became the defining figure of the series. His distinctive face and rough voice made him unmistakable.
While the attorneys at his side changed repeatedly, Gärtner remained for more than three decades. After 300 episodes, he said goodbye in 2013, bringing an entire era to an end. A year later, ZDF revived the format and, despite the same title, spoke of a completely new series.
ZDF's Friday crime slot itself survives the cancellation. The broadcaster intends to continue the genre in the future with a stronger focus on fewer formats. 'With 'Mordufer', the previously predominantly urban crime offering has already been expanded to include a landscape-oriented facet,' ZDF explained.
