Thieves in the Night

Tatort is a long-running German/Austrian/Swiss, crime television series set in various parts of these countries. The show is broadcast on the channels of ARD in Germany, ORF 2 in Austria and SF1 in Switzerland. The first episode was broadcast on November 29, 1970. The opening sequence for the series has remained the same throughout the decades, which remains highly unusual for any such long-running TV series up to date. Each of the regional TV channels which together form ARD, plus ORF and SF, produces its own episodes, starring its own police inspector, some of which, like the discontinued Schimanski, have become cultural icons. The show appears on DasErste and ORF 2 on Sundays at 8:15 p.m. and currently about 30 episodes are made per year. As of March 2013, 865 episodes in total have been produced. Tatort is currently being broadcast in the United States on the MHz Worldview channel under the name Scene of the Crime.

The psychological suspense story was based on Patricia Highsmith's novel Two Faces of January. A young man named Chester MacFarland (Charles Brauer) has embezzled a fortune from a U.S. bank, and after he and his wife escape to Switzerland to pick up his cash, they change their identities and head to Athens. Once safely in that city, they commit a second crime: they accidentally kill a police detective. A young archaeology student had been trailing after the couple since he first saw them because Chester looks just like his father. His curiosity puts him at the scene of the killing when it happens, and now all three protagonists face an uncertain future.