The Burrow goes to Weimar for my latest scrape with the Criminal Element, a review of the hit German TV series Babylon Berlin:
Despite its utter failure to provide stability for the German people between the wars, the late Weimar Republic has been fabulously successful in another regard: providing the perfect morally dubious backdrop for generations of spy, political, and crime thrillers. If noir ever lived anywhere, it was in Weimar Berlin—amidst political and economic upheaval, social unrest, an exploding sexual revolution, corruption, violence, a vast gulf between the rich and everyone else, and as the crossroads of central Europe, the collision of actors good and bad from all points of the compass. If you can’t write dark in this setting, take up knitting instead…