While giving an acceptance speech for the award of “European Achievement in Fiction Series” at the European Film Awards 2019 on December 7, the three co-authors/directors of the show Babylon Berlin confirmed that there will be a fourth season.
The German neo-noir television series is created, written, and directed by Tom Tykwer, Achim von Borries, and Hendrik Handloegten. It is based on the novels by German author Volker Kutscher. The cast includes Volker Bruch and Liv Lisa Fries, among others.
Set in Berlin in 1929 during the Weimar Republic, the plot follows Gereon Rath, a police inspector from Cologne who is on a secret mission to dismantle an extortion ring, and Charlotte Ritter, police clerk by day, flapper by night, who is aspiring to become a police inspector. Inspector Gereon Rath is also dealing with a mystery of his own.
As shown in the opening sequence of the first episode, Gereon is searching for the source of his sense of guilt, buried deep in his subconscious, after the trauma of World War I.
Although Netflix released the first two seasons of the show for audiences in the US, Canada, and Australia, the series first premiered on Sky 1, a German-language entertainment channel broadcast by Sky Deutschland, in October 2017.
The first broadcast was a continuous run of two eight-episode seasons. The sixteen episodes had an overall budget of €45 million, making it the most expensive outing in German TV history.
Critical reception towards Babylon Berlin has been overwhelmingly positive. The first season sits upon a 100% “Fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, cementing the fact that the series is complex and beautifully shot.
The third season premiered on Sky 1 on 24 January this year. Audiences will be treated to twelve new episodes. Netflix subscribers can access the episodes from February 28, 2020, onward.