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Germany's 'Babylon Berlin' Crime Series Is Like 'Cabaret' On Cocaine

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

German TV series are getting popular here in the U.S. First there was "Deutschland 83." Then there was "Dark." And now the latest is a crime series set in 1920s Berlin. It's called "Babylon Berlin," and it's out today on Netflix. Esme Nicholson reports it explores the Weimar era's raging nightlife and brutal criminal underbelly.

(SOUNDBITE OF SEVERIJA JANUSAUSKAITE SONG, "ZU ASCHE, ZU STAUB (PSYCHO NIKOROS)")

ESME NICHOLSON, BYLINE: It's 1929, and the capital of the Weimar Republic is a hedonistic city of extremes. True to the party drug of the era, you could say this series is "Cabaret" on cocaine.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ZU ASCHE, ZU STAUB (PSYCHO NIKOROS)")

SEVERIJA JANUSAUSKAITE: (Singing in German).

NICHOLSON: The first season of "Babylon Berlin" is set a few months before the Wall Street crash, before the rise of fascism. And it depicts a city on the edge of an abyss. Co-creator Achim von Borries says a German period drama that's not about World War II or the Cold War is long overdue.

ACHIM VON BORRIES: In the '20s, it was really the capital of the world. And nobody really knows about it because, of course, the monstrosity of the Nazi period afterwards is so huge.

NICHOLSON: In the city where Albert Einstein, Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill and Marlene Dietrich set the artistic and intellectual pulse, "Babylon Berlin" follows a different beat - that of Police Inspector Gereon Rath. Writer and director Tom Tykwer, best known for his 1998 film "Run Lola Run," says Weimar Berlin was as rich in crime as it was in culture.

TOM TYKWER: We had some really famous serial killers, some really ugly crimes that came from Berlin and that created a myth about the darkness and the filthiness of the city.

(SOUNDBITE OF JOHNNY KLIMEK AND TOM TYKWER'S "EINE FRAU IN BERLIN")

NICHOLSON: In the first episode, Inspector Rath and his partner Wolter arrest a former colleague who's now a heroin addict living on the streets.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "BABYLON BERLIN")

PETER KURTH: (As Bruno Wolter, speaking German).

NICHOLSON: Wolter mocks him for being a so-called trembler, a First World War veteran suffering from shell shock. Inspector Rath remain silent because he, too, suffers, but suppresses his shakes with regular doses of morphine.

ULRIKE ZITZLSPERGER: You've got lots of veterans. You've got people who've lost limbs, and thousands.

NICHOLSON: Ulrike Zitzlsperger is a Weimar Berlin specialist and professor of German studies. Sitting in a replica of a 1920s cafe, she says these men were visceral reminders of the trenches.

ZITZLSPERGER: There's a lot of talk about an emasculated society at the time. In Germany, these men are no heroes. You can't talk about the war. You want to move on. So the trauma is absolutely horrific.

NICHOLSON: In "Babylon Berlin," this damaged generation that can't sleep for PTSD finds solace in night clubs. Director Tom Tykwer says clubbing was cheap, and all walks of life met on the dance floor or in the brothel below.

TYKWER: Nightlife then was spectacular and very experimental with lots of diverse clubs for more or less any kind of taste.

NICHOLSON: Tykwer's co-creator, Henk Handloegten, says there are similarities between the nightlife of 1920s Berlin and that of today. Take the music.

HENK HANDLOEGTEN: If you take techno music and you take people from the '20s on film and they are dancing the Charleston, it matches perfectly.

(SOUNDBITE OF MOKA EFTI ORCHESTRA'S "TRESOR UNSER")

NICHOLSON: In one episode, Bryan Ferry takes to the stage to perform Roxy Music numbers for the Jazz Age, lending a bit of '70s glam.

(SOUNDBITE OF THE BRYAN FERRY ORCHESTRA'S "DANCE AWAY")

NICHOLSON: It's in one of these clubs that we reach the female lead, Lotte Ritter. By day she's a typist at the police headquarters, by night a casual prostitute in the club's fetish center, where she earns extra cash to escape her squalid tenement. She's an emancipated Weimar woman now even allowed to vote, and she's the perfect foil to Inspector Rath's shattered male soul. As his unofficial sidekick, Lotte ventures with Rath into Berlin's criminal underworld. Cultural historian Ulrike Zitzlsperger.

ZITZLSPERGER: It's a perfect setting. There's a real obsession with serial killers. You get types of cannibalism. Then you get political crimes. It is a tense climate between Communists and National Socialists that's heating up. So the awareness of an underbelly is really quite strong.

NICHOLSON: "Babylon Berlin" captures the dark glamour of a briefly exhilarating time between the wars. And for today's Berliners, faced with the city's steady, sterile gentrification, the show offers a welcome dose of escapism. For NPR News, I'm Esme Nicholson in Berlin.

(SOUNDBITE OF THE BRYAN FERRY ORCHESTRA'S "DANCE AWAY")