Joshua Kimmich and the horror grumbler

Actually, Hackl's parents probably meant well that they had their boy baptized not only Johann, but also Bonifaz at some point in the early fifties. Bonifaz is one, at least that's what the encyclopedia predicts for every bearer of the name who has a good fortune.

It cannot be said that this promise of baptism was kept at the Hackl. Hackl sits on the mountain of rubble of his life and takes offense. Like Seppl from Hotzenplotz, who has grown old, he strides through the "crime scene" that bears his name and through Hasenbergl, which is Munich's Marzahn.

Krachlederne, checked shirt, Sepplhut, a visual aid on the nose that dates from the time before progressive lenses were invented. A Seppl into which the evil spirit of the magician Petrosilius Zwackelmann has entered.

The Hackl is a grumbler, a calf biter who takes biting literally, a troublemaker, a troublemaker, a jealous bastard, an angry citizen. And the Hasenbergl doesn't necessarily get the best out of him. He can't stand the world, he can't stand himself. Burghart Klaußner, an arch-Prussian with a Bavarian socialization (he spent his youth in Gräfelfing), is the time bomb ticking in Dagmar Gabler's "Tatort", directed by Katharina Bischoff.

“Hackl” is, of course, more than Hackl, it is the story of the loser who throws fish medulla at children in the neighbor's garden and finally flees into the bowels of the soul silo settlement in the north of Munich. The Hackl is just the extreme outgrowth of a way of life that everyone in Feldmoching is at least slightly ailing from.

And like an evil magic on Leitmayr and Batic, the two stiff-necked gray heads, who are supposed to clear up the death of the neighborhood beau Adam Moser in the Hasenbergl. Johann Bonifaz Hackl's escape route is, so to speak, the Ariadne thread of a story labyrinth between classic crime stories and a panorama of society.

Adam had everything. He was good-looking, had a motorbike that rattled through, bad Hawaiian shirts, a chic girlfriend, and a bungalow surrounded by twenty-story buildings. He was charming, caring. He was too good for the envious world of Hasenbergl, who watched him being happy from the balconies of their living quarters. Which she did extensively, but also extremely reluctantly.

And then he was just dead, Adam Moser. Just a moment ago he was happily cornering, it was the middle of the night, the motorbike was rattling, then an illegal laser pointer burned his retina away, Adam went nuts, the motorbike fell over. Adam had no chance. Even if he had a helmet.

The hackl is of course immediately suspicious. Because he sometimes shoots passers-by with an airgun, whom Leitmayr has bitten in the hand, which you can still see because he calls Batic Drecks-Jugo and addresses him as Slobodan because he screams and hits. When he is eventually taken away, he has to wear a plastic neck brace to protect himself from biting, like dogs get if they aren't supposed to lick their wounds.

The music turns the Hackl into a brother in the spirit of the Joker. He is tormented by a bad tinnitus and has absences. You hear what he hears. One is in his head. Sees the narrow world, the underground into which he disappears because nothing else remains as he sees it. Not a bad guy actually. But hopelessly twisted.

"Hackl" doesn't turn Hackl into a monster, but rather into the sad portent of a cityscape that molds people based on Hackl's model. It is actually a scandal that the increasingly bitchy inspectors had never been able to solve a murder in the Hasenbergl in more than ninety cases. There are more stories lying around than in Bogenhausen or Grünwald, where inspectors on television are particularly fond of being sent.

But so be it. Bischoff and Gabler have resisted the temptation to go straight to all hotspots and at least mention them. “Hackl” stays focused on less than half a dozen characters, follows Hackl's Way of the Cross in fabulous images, and doesn't pack them into an ode to a grumbling. "Hackl" is more of a morality. Deeply focused, full of sadness, never earth-bound, always ready to jump into irony, oddly funny at times.

And then of course there is Kenny in the Hasenbergl. He is allowed to stand at the checkout in the "Pump Up" gym and mixes poisonous-looking woodruff smoothies. Kenny also has a YouTube channel. He gives fitness tips. Kalli, the remarkably clever Batic-Leitmayr assistant, thinks Kenny is great.

Kenny says maybe four sentences. Joshua Kimmich from Bayern Munich is Kenny. And he even gets his sentences out better than Berti Vogts did at the time (“Give the rabbit an extra carrot. It saved our lives”). But that's not difficult.