Sperling und das Loch in der Wand

ZDF, 1996
Director: Dominik Graf
Produced by Polyphon Film- und Fernsehgesellschaft
Actors: Dieter Pfaff, Benno Fürmann, Petra Kleinert, Hans-Joachim Grubel, Julia Jäger, Ulrich Nöthen, among others

"Sperling und das Loch in der Wand" is the prelude to a series of crime thrillers that set new standards for its genre in German television. Leading actor Dieter Pfaff, author Rolf Basedow and director Dominik Graf together developed the idea of a "crime thriller without violence" that aimed to captivate viewers with suspense and intelligence alone. Chief Commissioner Sperling is a detective who goes about his investigative duties with humour, imagination, entertaining charm and a human touch. He has his own style of solving cases and uses his sluggish tubby appearance to make people think he is just an ordinary kind of man in the street only to then use perseverance and humour to outwit his opponents who have made the mistake of underestimating him.
The theme music for this type of crime thriller is perhaps the first film score in German television that works aggressively and authentically with scratches and hip-hop elements. Andreas Bick's catchy theme music and his work on parts of the illustrative soundtrack was nominated for the Rolf-Hans-Müller Prize for television film music. The film won the Adolf-Grimme prize and Dominik Graf's second film in the Sperling series, "Sperling und der brennende Arm", was decorated at the film festival in Munich.