Karin Mikityla

Kopf oder Zahl

In East Berlin in the late 70s, two boys meet one evening in a disco: Thomas, who is from a working class family and is doing an apprenticeship, and Michael, a 16-year-old school pupil from an educated middle-class family. They both miss the tram home and walk together instead, ending up at Michael’s house where they discuss God and the world into the early hours. Following this encounter the two boys enter into an unusual friendship, united by their mutual desire to get away from the phoniness, the limitations and the restrictions of their parents and of society.

Stockinger is an Austrian-made police television drama, with fourteen 45-minute episodes first aired from 1996 to 1997. The series is a spin-off from the popular Austrian television drama Inspector Rex, and focuses on Ernst Stockinger, one of the original members of the Homicide division or Mordkommission in German. Stockinger leaves the series to return to Salzburg where his wife has inherited a dental practice from her late father . He is appointed a Bezirksinspektor at the Landes Gendarmerie, sharing an office with District Inspector Antonella Simoni. Unlike the members of the team in 'Rex', who appear to be self-directed and are seldom seen to answer to senior management, Stockinger reports to Dr Brunner, a philosophising burecratic senior police inspector. Stockinger is portrayed as a clumsy, almost Inspector Clouseau-like character, driving a clapped-out 1973 VW Variant, but single-minded when following up clues.