The German mini-series Crime Stories, based on the short stories of attorney and crime novelist Ferdinand von Schirach, is being released this week on DVD.
A lawyer does not always want to know what really happened. Older, stoop-shouldered Fredrich Leonhardt (played by Josef Bierbichler) is the ultimate defense lawyer: experienced, astute, well-spoken and aggressive when he needs to be. In six episodes, Leonardt takes on clients with single-minded intent: to defend them within the boundaries of the law. And defend them he does — the gentle wife-killer, the schizophrenic teenager, idiotic gangsters, the womanizing executive, the young Lebanese genius, the anonymous man who killed a little too skillfully while defending himself.
Years of casework have taught Leonardt what his job is and what it isn't. His job is to keep his clients out of prison; it isn't to judge them or like them or even understand them. As a judge reminds him, he's known among the prosecutors as being the brakes on the cart of justice. It's something Leonhardt is mostly proud of, because even he has regrets about some of the clients he's defended.
Taken from modern headlines, the cases in Crime Stories offer a frightening window on humanity. Not so much because of the crimes themselves, but because they were committed by relatively normal people who snapped. They're a chilling reminder that within everyone lays the capacity for abhorrent behavior and atrocious acts.
Originally airing in April 2013, Crime Stories is in German with English subtitles. See more about the stories from which this series was adapted, below.
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Crime
Ferdinand von Schirach
A Story Story Collection
This debut collection of 11 short stories daringly brings to light the motivations stirring within the criminal mind. By turns witty and sorrowful, unflinchingly brutal and heartbreaking, the deeply affecting, quietly unnerving cases presented here urge a closer examination of guilt and innocence.
In "Fähner", a small-town physician and avid gardener betrays little emotion when he takes an ax to his wife’s head, an act that shocks the locals but provides a long-awaited reprieve for the good doctor. Abbas, a Palestinian refugee who is cornered into a life of crime, finds true love and seemingly a saving grace with a beautiful student named Stefanie in "Summertime". But when she is viciously murdered in a hotel room after having been paid to sleep with one of the country’s wealthiest men, is Abbas to blame or is it the man who seems to have it all? And in the startling story "Love", a young man’s infatuation with his girlfriend takes a grisly turn as he comes to grips with his unconventional — and uncontrollable — impulses to truly know a woman.
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