Crime dramas tend to have many of the same tropes and characters: The reluctant criminal, the career criminals, etc. When there is at least one or two different characters in such a show, we take notice, like we did with a new German crime drama.
Opening Shot: A Berlin skyline shot. “BERLIN. MUSEUMINSEL.”
The Gist: A rare coin is being shown in a museum; it’s worth well over two million euros. Two masked men brazenly stride in, take pickaxes to the case, take the ring and run out. They are chased through the area until they get to their getaway car. The brazen robbers are Karim Al Walid (Veysel) and his brother Tarek (Nimo).
Elsewhere in the city, Charly (Frederick Lau) is enjoying a day at the zoo with his wife Samira (Svenja Jung) and son Jonas (Jonathan Tittel). As an expert locksmith, he knows how to open pretty much any door, and he demonstrates that by jimmying open the door to the closed big cat enclosure.
That night, he’s driving in his work van when he gets a call to open up a door to a bowling alley. When he does that, he realizes that was a ruse; Stepan (Sergej Trifunovic), an old associate of Charly’s during his days as an expert safe cracker, wants him for a job. He’s the only one who can open the safe they’re targeting under duress. Stepan gives the plan, offers him 20% of the 2 million euro haul, and says it’s an in and out job. Still, Charly says no.
Meanwhile, in Vienna, Joseph (Christoph Krutzler) is a driver for an organized crime gang. He gets in a scrape with some of his gang’s clients as they are about to get violent with Alina (Klara Mucci), a woman that’s part of the gang that is occasionally hired out to clients for sex.
There’s a lot of infighting in this gang; the big boss (Branko Samarovski) is on his deathbed, and the boss’ brother (Karl Welunschek) is looking to have him sign an endowment agreement so he can take over the business with little red tape. They are looking to steal the coin from the Muslim gang that stole it and sell it to a Russian buyer. The idea is that Joseph will drive to Berlin with another thug, Zwanziger (Georg Friedrich) to coordinate the handoff from Stepan once he steals it. But the big boss warns Joseph to leave Austria and lay low until well after he dies. Joseph, however, ignores that warning when the boss’ brother threatens Alina.
Despite his refusal, Charly is roped into Stepan’s plan when one of the other planners, Henning (Jan Georg Schütte), visits his family, holding a cat that needs emergency care (Samira is a veterinarian). With that obvious threat on the table, Charly agrees to do the job for nothing, as long as Stepan or any of his people never call on him again.
The night, Stepan’s well-thought-out plan is thrown into chaos when Karim, who was upbraided by his older brother, the boss of his gang, for being so brazen about robbing the coin, goes to the nail salon where the safe is to retrieve it.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Crooks is a variation on the “last job and I’m out” trope that we recently saw with AMC’s Parish, though this one ends up becoming something more akin to a two-handed version of Lupin.
Our Take: Directed and co-written by Marvin Kren, Crooks is a pretty standard crime drama, albeit one that takes place over a large swath of Europe; the action will take place in Berlin, Vienna and Marseille, where Charly’s family ends up going to get away from the threats against them. There’s a bit of a difference in this story because Charly and Joseph, two reluctant members of the crew that stole this coin, will eventually become allies in the effort to break away from whatever deep crap they’ve stepped into.
Your enjoyment will really depend on how many chases, shootings and other action scenes you’re OK with watching. There’s a little bit of character development, with Charly and Joseph’s reluctance to be in this world pretty apparent from the first moments on screen. Joseph seems to be especially reluctant; there are rumors that he’s an illegitimate son of the big boss, but his penchant to get emotionally involved with the “girls” that service the gang’s clients has gotten him into hot water in the past.
The action scenes are fun, and even though most of the criminal characters surrounding Charly and Joseph are going to be flat stereotypes, there should be enough going on with each of the main characters’ lives and the friendship of necessity they strike up to keep viewers watching.
Sex and Skin: When Joseph extricates Alina from the client’s flat, one of the skinheads was about to force her to perform oral sex. We also see the big boss’ bare butt in his hospital gown when he gets out of bed after a shot of adrenaline is administered.
Parting Shot: After the robbery goes sideways, Charly runs into an alleyway as police lights start to appear.
Sleeper Star: Svenja Jung’s character Samira seems to be a stabilizing force in Charly’s life. Perhaps at some point, we’ll see scenes of their backstory.
Most Pilot-y Line: Charly and Samira groove to the Moonlighting theme song in their bedroom. Is that what passes for “sexy music” in Germany?
Our Call: STREAM IT. Crooks has potential to rise above the usual crime drama tropes, thanks to the unlikely friendship at its core. But aside from that, the show is nothing we haven’t seen before.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.