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''Tatort'' (German police jargon meaning the scene of a crime) is a German language police procedural television series developed by the German television channel ARD. It is unique in its approach, in that it is jointly produced by all of the station's regional public-service broadcasters whereby every regional station contributes a number of episodes to a common pool. Therefore, the series is a collection of different police stories where different police teams each solve crimes in their respective city. Uniqueness in architecture, customs and dialects of the cities is therefore a distinctive part of the series and often the city, not the police force is the real main character of an episode. The concept of local stations only producing a couple of shows per year has also enabled the shows to be longer (90 minutes) and more fleshed out psychologically than other weekly TV dramas. The first episode was broadcast on November 29, 1970 and the series has been continuously on the air ever since. This makes it the longest-running TV-drama of Germany. Episodes are broadcast on ARD's main channel Das Erste on Sunday evening at the prime viewing time of 8.15 pm (just after the 8 o'clock news) somewhere between once and twice a month. Reruns are often shown by various regional ARD stations and on foreign broadcasters. Next to the member stations of the ARD, the National Austrian broadcasting corporation Österreichischer Rundfunk joined the production pool in 1971 and airs the program on its ORF 2 channel. Switzerland's Schweizer Fernsehen joined the pool from 1990 to 2001 and again in 2011 and distributes its episodes through its channel SRF 1. Although not sharing the ''Tatort'' logo, the series ''Polizeiruf 110'' by Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR) is closely related to the ''Tatort'' format. ==Concept== The main feature of ''Tatort'' is that it is jointly produced by all participating regional TV stations: Each of the eleven companies involved (the nine German regional TV channels or ''Landesrundfunkanstalten'' that together form ARD, plus ORF in Austria and SRF in Switzerland), produces its own episodes, starring its own police inspector or team of inspectors. The episodes are then fed into a common pool and shown through all participating stations as part of their common programming. This means that if one ''Tatort'' features one team of inspectors in one specific city, the next ''Tatort'' will play in another city and feature another set of inspectors. Combine this with the fact that the episodes are, with 90 minutes of length, almost the size of a movie and with the fact that, with rarely more than 30 episodes in one year, the series is broadcast only every other week and you come up with a cultural phenomenon that is closer to a string of made-for-TV movies then your typical run-of-the-mill police series. This pooling concept was in great part due to the nature of the public broadcast television channel ARD which is jointly operated by all of Germany's public ''Landesrundfunkanstalten'': Originally developed as radio stations, each 'Anstalt' produces its own radio channels, but cooperates on national programs such as the newscasts that are broadcast throughout all channels as a common block. With the advent of television, this was expanded further in that there was only one national channel jointly operated by all ''Anstalten'' with a regional block as well as a common programming. But unlike for instance in the USA with its Network affiliate system no single corporation would produce all common programming. Instead the different member stations would each contribute a number of programs to the common block to be shown by all other stations. As a result of this each of the member stations already had the capacity and experience to produce TV-programs, even feature films on their own although no ''Anstalt'' had the means and capacity to produce a complete series. Jointly producing one crime series with episodes contributed by each member station was thus a logical step. Apart from the unique joint-pooling system, the series is also characterized by the relative length of an episode (90 minutes) which allows for more in-dept and psychological fleshing out of the characters. Although almost all episodes feature the investigation of an homicide, it is never just a simple case of whodunit. Often the time available allows for the crime to be shown in all its aspects with equal attention focused on the perpetrators and the victims as on the inspectors. On several occasions the actual police work is just a side note in the story as the main plot is the way one of the persons involved deals with the crime and its aftermath. With the national broadcasting corporations of Austria and Switzerland joining in, the episodes of ''Tatort'' are set in various cities of Germany, Vienna and Lucerne. Originally each of the participating member stations limited their episodes to one team of investigators in one city, for ease of production this was mostly the city the broadcast station was in, but over the years some stations broadcasting over a large area have ''Tatort''s playing in several cities. Notably the WDR has three teams of investigators playing respectively in Cologne, Düsseldorf and Münster. Episodes are either produced by the station's own production facilities or are filmed and often also written by outside production houses on behalf of the station. This sometimes leads to situations where for instance a ''Tatort'' playing in Thuringia is actually produced in Bavaria with only a handful of scenes shot 'on location' in the town the story is supposed to play in. A similar concept of independently filming and then pooling episodes was used from 1988 to 1992 in the series Eurocops jointly produced by several national European TV stations. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Tatort」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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