Babelsberg Babylon

Summary

A gripping noir thriller set amid the creative ferment of 1920s Berlin. Berlin, 1925. When actress Krista Wolff goes missing in the middle of filming the silent movie Fate, director Jonas Beck goes in search of her. Krista's uncle is studio boss Walter Lenz, a media mogul and leader of the German National People's Party. No one’s in any doubt that Krista got the role because of him. She's stunningly beautiful - but also stunningly talentless. While Jonas heads into the night to begin his enquiries, Lenz hires Private Eye Ernst von Haber to track Krista down. Their parallel investigations lead them through the weird and wonderful arts world of Weimar Berlin, where Futurists rub shoulders with Cubists, Expressionists drink champagne with gangsters and bankers and satirists mingle with hedonists at decadent underground cabaret bars. Peter X, an obsessive movie fan and patient of Sigmund Freud, who was horrifically wounded and psychologically scarred in World War One, is soon in the frame for Krista’s disappearance. He has been stalking her for months, and both Jonas and von Haber suspect him of kidnapping her. But the truth is altogether stranger and darker, and as Krista’s secrets are revealed, the repercussions for the men on her trail will be explosive.... Mixing suspense and black comedy, this atmospheric radio series, redolent of German Expressionistic cinema and centred around the legendary Babelsberg film studio, vividly captures the excitement and exuberance of Berlin at the height of the Weimar era.

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