General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Criminal: Germany

Criminal: Germany (German title: Criminal: Deutschland) is a 2019 German-language Netflix crime anthology series in which each of its three episodes consists of a single police interrogation, with detectives using psychological pressure, rule-bending, and personal risk to extract the truth from a suspect. It is the German chapter of Criminal, a twelve-episode anthology produced as one project but released as four separate series covering France, Spain, Germany, and the United Kingdom, with three episodes per country.¹

Key fact	Detail
Format	Police procedural set exclusively inside a police interview suite; 3 episodes of roughly 45 minutes each¹
Release	20 September 2019 on Netflix, as one of four parallel Criminal series²
Episodes	"Jochen" (45 min), "Yilmaz" (41 min), "Claudia" (45 min)²
German creative team	Oliver Hirschbiegel (director and co-executive producer), Bernd Lange (writer), Sebastian Heeg (co-writer)¹
Franchise creators	George Kay and Jim Field Smith, showrunners of the whole Criminal project¹
Main cast	Eva Meckbach, Sylvester Groth, Florence Kasumba, with Peter Kurth, Christian Berkel, and Nina Hoss among the suspects³
Reception	IMDb 7.6; Rotten Tomatoes season 1 Tomatometer 82% from 2 reviews⁴^•⁵

Spoilers

Episodes

Each episode pairs the same German investigative team with a new suspect, and the German-language episode titles name the suspect or central figure of each case.²

"Jochen" (45 minutes). The inspectors question a successful real estate developer about a missing handyman and the skeleton found beneath his first building project in the former East Berlin; the interrogation reaches back to a murder case from 1991.³^•²
"Yilmaz" (41 minutes). What begins as an apparently straightforward domestic abuse case becomes clouded when the attorney of a father-in-law with considerable influence joins the questioning and seeks to shape how the story unfolds.³
"Claudia" (45 minutes). A detective tries to extract the location of a body from a serial killer's hardened lover, then puts herself on the line and steps into the room herself.³

Cast and characters

The regular investigative team is led by Eva Meckbach as Nadine Keller, Sylvester Groth as Karl Schulz, and Florence Kasumba as Antje Borchert, with Christian Kuchenbuch as Martin Ludwig and Jonathan Berlin as Stefan Proska in supporting detective roles.³^•⁷ The suspect roles are filled by German screen actors: Peter Kurth plays Jochen in the first episode, Christian Berkel plays Marquardt, Deniz Arora plays Yilmaz Yussef, and Nina Hoss plays Claudia Hartmann in the third episode.²

Concept and production

Netflix announced Criminal in November 2018 as a "format bending" procedural with a single premise: every story takes place entirely within a police interview suite, focusing on the intense mental conflict between the police officer and the suspect. The plan called for twelve unique stories set in four countries, each episode in its local language, written and directed by talent from that country, with three episodes per country.¹ The German volume was assigned to Oliver Hirschbiegel, the director of Downfall and Four Blocks, as director and co-executive producer, working from a script by Bernd Lange (Das Verschwinden) with co-writer Sebastian Heeg (Blaumacher).¹

Although presented as four national series, the project was physically one production: all twelve episodes, including the German ones, were shot in 2019 at Netflix's production hub at Ciudad de la Tele, at Secuoya Studios in Tres Cantos near Madrid, where the French, Spanish, and UK episodes were also filmed.² The German episodes were produced by Idiotlamp Productions (London) in collaboration with Netflix, with Jim Field Smith, George Kay, and Oliver Hirschbiegel as executive producers and José Luis Escolar as co-producer.² A scholarly analysis of Netflix's local-language strategy notes that the company released Criminal as four programs even though it was produced as one, and that the most striking visual element of the franchise is that every episode uses the same set depicting the same interior and exterior.⁶

Reception

Critical response highlighted the stripped-down format. Rotten Tomatoes summarizes the series as a police procedural that "strips down to the cat-and-mouse game of the interview room" and grows in intensity; its season 1 Tomatometer stood at 82% from two reviews, with the audience score based on fewer than 50 ratings.⁵ Matt Zoller Seitz, a television critic writing for New York Magazine/Vulture, observed that a viewer can be a "tourist" in the series, though it may not be strictly necessary to visit all four of Criminal's countries to get a sense of its world.⁵ Jacob Oller of Paste Magazine gave a more critical 4.5/10 review, arguing that a tactical disconnect hampered a competent cast and made each case's resolution feel as transparent as the right side of the one-way glass.⁵

German-language critics responded positively. A review by Jan Freitag at DWDL described the anthology as "kriminell gut" (criminally good) and noted that, thanks to outstanding actors, the result was particularly impressive in Germany; he described the shared premise across the four countries as self-contained cases built on identical starting situations, a suspect, usually with a lawyer, interrogated in a confined space by two to four officers over 45 minutes.⁸ The series holds a 7.6 rating on IMDb.⁴

Place in the Criminal franchise

The four Criminal series share one set, one premise, and their showrunners, but differ in cast, language, and creative teams: the UK version features David Tennant and Hayley Atwell, while the German version's cases and personnel are entirely German.¹^•⁹ The Goethe-Institut describes Criminal: Deutschland as offering insights into everyday police work, in which suspects are pressed for the truth even when rules are bent and everything is staked on the outcome.¹⁰ The series remains available on Netflix, where it is listed as a limited series rated TV-MA.³

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Scripted television and comedy series › Drama and prestige series (individual series) › Crime and thriller series › Police and detective procedurals

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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