For fans of German period drama Babylon Berlin, the wait is almost over.
Shooting for season four of the hit series, a detective drama set against the backdrop of pre-World War II Berlin, has just wrapped, and Babylon Berlin producers X-Filme have released the first look image of the new season. The new season shot for 129 days on the Neue Berliner Straße-backlot at Studio Babelsberg as well on original locations across the German capital, including Berlin’s legendary Karl-Marx-Allee.
Seasons 1-3 followed the adventures of Gereon Rath, a police inspector from Cologne new to the German capital, played by Volker Bruch, and Charlotte Ritter (Liv Lisa Fries), a Berlin flapper who aspires to become a detective. Their journey through the grimy underworld of 1920s Berlin is set against a backdrop of political chaos as Germany’s Weimar Republic slowly unravels and a new threat emerges from an unlikely source: a fringe extremist party called the National Socialists, or Nazis.
Season 3 ended with the stock market crash of 1929, the catastrophe that will trigger the end of the democratic Weimar Republic. Season four takes place in 1930 and 1931.
“It’s the German capital captured between the Weimar Republic and the surge of Nazi Germany,” said X-Filme’s producers Stefan Arndt, Uwe Schott and Michael Polle. “This time, slowly but steadily, Germany slides into an abyss as the winter of 1930/31 begins.”
While Gereon’s investigations lead him into Berlin’s boxing milieu, and uncomfortably close to Hitler’s militant supporters, Charlotte risks her job at the police department to try and help her homeless sister, who roams the streets of Berlin with a group of hungry young people, trying to survive as the economy collapses and unemployment soars. Also returning for season four are supporting actors Benno Fürmann, Lars Eidinger, Hannah Herzsprung, Christian Friedel, Udo Samel, Godehard Giese, Fritzi Haberlandt and Karl Markovics.
Achim von Borries, Bettine von Borries, Henk Handloegten, Khyana El Bitar and Tom Tykwer co-wrote Babylon Berlin season four. The set designer is Uli Hanisch, who just won an Emmy for his work on Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit.
Babylon Berlin season four, produced by X-Filme in co-production with ARD Degeto, Sky, WDR and Beta Film, will premiere on Sky Germany next year, followed by German public broadcaster ARD.
Source: Hollywood
