Dark Rivers, on MHz Choice, is a German series about a woman and her teen daughter who are in witness protection in Passau, a quaint city on the Austrian border, hiding from Berlin criminals that the mother testified against. When the mother, a factory worker named Frederike Bader (Marie Leuenberger), hog-ties a guy who is stealing from the local market, she makes the news, drawing the attention of Kahder Bahdari (Raymond Tarabay), the Berlin gangster she put in jail. Bahdari sends his son Ahmed (Timo Fakhravar) to kill them. Meanwhile, private detective Ferdinand Zankl (Michael Ostrowski) witnesses the market robbery by chance, and becomes fascinated with Frederike, eventually figuring out who she is. Frederike’s teen daughter Mia (Nadja Sabersky), who is frustrated at being stuck in provincial Passau, works at the local bakery, which becomes an important plot point later on.
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Unknown Motives
Zankl, who is referred to by everyone in town as “that private detective”, is the most interesting character in Dark Rivers. He’s clever but sleazy, “doing the devil’s dirty work,” in Frederike’s words. Indeed, he helps rich creeps cover their tracks. Yet, he’s likable. For some reason, he decides to help Mia and Frederike, but we don’t know why. For her part, Frederike wants him to buzz off. She’s already in trouble with her handler from Witness Protection, Jochen Mohn (Stefan Rudolph) for drawing attention to herself by taking down the robber. Still, Zankl inserts himself into their problem in episode 1, and in episode 2, he extorts Frederike to help him out of a jam, which she reluctantly does. In flashbacks to Berlin, we see that Mia got into some trouble with drugs, and that incident somehow links Frederike to the Bahdari clan. In Passau, restless Mia challenges Frederike, making life difficult, until she has to reckon with her part in a tragedy that I won’t spoil here.
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Our take on Dark Rivers
Episodes are 90 minutes long, so in Germany I think they are presented more as movies. But here they are bundled together as a series. In each episode, there is a new case that Frederike and Zankl investigate, much to the local police’s chagrin, as well as the overarching story about the Bahdari clan tracking Frederike and Mia. The whole concept will require you to suspend some disbelief. There are some absurd moments that had me chuckling throughout the series. In addition to beautiful scenery, the show also features quirky small-town characters that grow on you, like the bakery owner’s son, who talks non-stop about the Roman soldiers who once populated the land. I’m never sure where Dark Rivers is going to go next, which keeps it interesting.
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