Following the success of a film for television aired in March 2015 on German private channel Sat.1 (1), crime comedy Einstein is due to return this autumn as a full 10-episode series.
Actor and singer Tom Beck (Alarm für Cobra 11 - Die Autobahn Polizeï) stars as Felix Winterberg, great-great grandson of Albert Einstein and scientific genius himself, who unwillingly ends up as a police consultant.
Felix "Einstein" Winterberg, aged 33, teaches theoretical physics at this university. He also works for CERN
(2) and on a new source of energy based on dark matter. To stay active 21 hours a day he's an heavy user of amphetamines. When Felix learns that he has Huntington's disease (like his father) and will probably not live past age 40, he tries to empty the medicine chest of his doctor!
Elena Lange, a cop, arrests him on the way to the hospital for her 8-year old son
Leon, who needs a pacemaker.
After Winterberg unexpectedy proves himself to be useful to the police while under arrest, Elena's boss
Tremmel blackmails the scientist to assist them about the explosion of a flat rented by presumed terrorists. Felix deduces that they were actually drug dealers and teams up with a reluctant Lange on the case. Someone tries to poison him, his computer is hacked, his turkish dealer (and good friend) is murdered and a mysterious asian agent steals his notes.
Far from being another procedural with the inevitable eccentric sleuth,
Einstein (the TV movie) is surprisingly enjoyable. Thanks mainly to
Tom Beck's irresistible performance as the flawed genius, both hilarious and (a little) touching. He's surrounded by a solid cast, starting with
Annika Ernst as Elena Lange and the talented
Rolf Kanies as
Stefan Tremmel. South African-born actress
Haley Louise Jones plays forensic specialist
Kirsten Maybach.
Beck, who played
Ben Jäger in
Alarm für Cobra 11 from 2008 to 2013, is joined by two other familiar faces from the
RTL show:
Mark Keller (
Weigert) and
Katrin Heß as Felix's student
Caro. Also starring
Jonathan Jakobbson (
Leon Lange),
Laura Berlin,
Constantin von Jascheroff,
Hubertus Hartmann (University dean
Middelberg), etc. Written by
Matthias Dinter & Martin Ritzenhoff and directed by
Thomas Jahn,
Einstein doesn't take itself seriously at all. It's more fast-paced comedy than a copycat of
Elementary, which is certainly better like that as TV wasn't in a desperate need for a new police consultant.
Produced by
Zeitsprung Pictures for
Sat. 1.
Till Derenbach exec produces.
Dominik Frankovski & Michael Souvignier are the producers. Music composed by
Karim Sebastian Elias.
Einstein is distributed by
Red Arrow International (
Der letzte Bülle). In France, private channel
M6 aired the TV movie in September 2015 as
Équations criminelles.
[Update - January 4, 2017] Finally, the series will premiere on January 10 with two episodes.
(1) We mentioned
Einstein on this
blog at the time but didn't review it due to unforeseen circumstances.
(2) Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire.
http://zeitsprung.de/en/home.html
http://www.quotenmeter.de/n/83779/sat-1-fiction-loos-zurueck-mehr-von-einstein