Code 37 - Season 1 - DVD

Content: The three investigators Charles (Marc Lauwrys), Kevin (Gilles Deschryver) and Bob (Michael Pas) from the sex crimes department are amazed when they meet their new boss, the tough Hannah Maes (Veerle Baetens), at a crime scene. And she quickly makes it clear that she won't let her male colleagues put her down. With tremendous quick wit and great powers of deduction, she sets about her first case, the death of a 35-year-old woman who appears to have been killed during sexually motivated choking games in a hotel. Was this woman leading a secret double life? Was her death an accident or cold-blooded murder? But also a woman brutally beaten in her apartment, a raped girl who lacks any memory of the crime, a website that publishes amateur porn of teenagers or a scandal in the Flemish porn industry demand all the attention of the investigator. But there is also a terrible event from her own past that just won't let her go and that she is determined to solve. But in the process, her father of all people, an influential judge, seems to keep putting obstacles in her way...

The crime series Code 37 ran successfully on Belgian television for three seasons between 2009 and 2012. Now this very exciting series has finally made it to Germany. The structure of the series is rather conventional, but alone the sometimes very dark cases that the sex crimes squad must deal with, ensure that Code 37 stands out from the crowd of European crime fare. Another reason is the extremely interesting main character. Hannah Maes is seemingly hard-boiled and is able to hold her own against the prejudices of her male colleagues with a lot of bite and coolness. At the same time, however, she is also a very vulnerable woman who is fighting a trauma from her past and finds it very difficult to open up to other people.

This multi-layered character is played quite brilliantly by Veerle Baetens, who became known to a wider audience in Germany last year through her starring role in the surprise arthouse hit The Broken Circle. Baetens succeeds very well in believably embodying the different facets of her character, making the detective superintendent so interesting and worth watching despite a few minor clichés. She is assisted by a really good team, which is really likeable not only because of the scripts but also because of the well-chosen actors.

Although sex crimes are a rather heavy subject, the makers managed to keep the series from being too dark and frustrating without trivializing the cases. But purposefully used loosening scenes and the renunciation of too drastic images ensure that the entertainment value of the series is not crushed by the severity of the subject matter. If you like well-acted and atmospherically filmed crime thrillers with exciting stories and interesting characters, you should not miss this first season of Code 37. Absolutely worth seeing!

Picture + Sound: The technical implementation of the individual episodes is on a good to very good TV level. The picture is absolutely clean and the overall sharpness is absolutely satisfactory, especially in brighter outdoor scenes. Only in the detail representation in darker scenes, there are slight point deductions here. The audio, which is in stereo, does a good job of showcasing both the dialogue and the atmospheric soundtrack. Not really spectacular, but perfectly adequate for a crime series. Good!

Extras: Unfortunately, apart from trailers, the disc has no bonus material on offer.

Conclusion: Code 37 is an exciting and, despite sometimes very heavy themes, extremely entertaining crime series that ran successfully on Belgian television between 2009 and 2012. With an extremely strong leading actress, a sympathetic team, where the chemistry is simply right and extremely rousing cases, the 13 episodes of the first season offer the best European crime entertainment, which is presented on DVD in good picture and sound quality. For this there is a very clear: Absolutely recommendable!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp