Over the centuries, the name Babylon has been used as shorthand for moral excess. We find it used again in the title of Babylon Berlin (2017–2022), a German neo-noir TV series based on the novels of Volker Kutscher. The Berlin featured in the show is not just any Berlin, but the tumultuous and free-spirited city of the 1930s, where proto-Nazi and Communist elements jockey for political influence, and where characters struggle with internal demons of their own.
In this setting of turmoil, multiple storylines of Babylon Berlin play out, complete with street riots, police corruption, organized-crime boxing leagues, and shadow forces conspiring to re-arm Germany in defiance of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, not to mention dancing until dawn by transsexuals, gays, and party animals, with cabaret singers, energetic bands, and avant-garde performers thrown into the mix.
In the four seasons thus far (Season 5 is expected sometime in 2025), we follow a romantic triangle in a crime family, shootouts, a high-ranking police official conspiring to support Nazi rearmament schemes, a honeypot Communist sympathizer, a wealthy industrialist with mommy issues, lawyers watching the rule of law dissolved by powerful interests, and, most centrally, a police inspector and his fresh-faced, inquisitive inspector-wannabe who, when not dancing or rescuing indigent siblings, occasionally moonlights in prostitution.
Thanks to the support of Netflix and Amazon Prime, Babylon Berlin provides a passport into another time, another continent, and another moral ethos, one that is intrinsically expansive for an American sensibility that sometimes seems focused on closing the windows and locking the shutters.
So consider a romp through Berlin of the 1930s, a time far more colorful and complex than most people know. The series is both educational and fun, thanks to intrepid and principled young police inspector Gereon Rath, played by Volker Bruch, and his playful, independent, and fascinating part-time demimonde paramour Charlotte Ritter, played by the energetic and adorable Liv Lisa Fries.
Paul Stokstad has a web design partnership, duckbyte.net, and moonlights as the MIU tennis and pickleball coach.