Alarm for Cobra 11: The Motorway Police

The series began in 1996 with the pilot film 'Bomben bei Kilometer 92', and was originally set in Berlin and Brandenburg before relocating to the Rhineland.

The character Ingo Fischer was killed on duty after only two episodes and was replaced by Semir Gerkhan, who has remained a constant fixture of the show ever since, while his partner has changed many times over the years.

The production relocated from Berlin to the Rhineland between Krefeld and Cologne in mid-1998 for season 5, coinciding with the move of production company Action Concept, yet the show's storyline never addressed or explained this sudden change of setting.

Early motorway scenes were filmed on a section of the former Reichsautobahn 51 that had been closed since 1969 and was later renaturalized in 1999/2000.

Since 2005, the production has used its own dedicated filming motorway, the roughly 1000-meter-long FTL Germany track in Siersdorf near Aldenhoven, where most of the show's stunt scenes are shot.

For the pilot film 'Jenseits von Eden', bunker scenes were shot at the former emergency seat of the North Rhine-Westphalia state government in Kall-Urft, while the Atacama Desert scenes were filmed at the Garzweiler open-pit mine near Grevenbroich.

For the pilot film 'Vendetta', the production traveled to Tirana, Albania for six days to shoot scenes there, while for the pilot 'Auferstehung' most scenes were filmed in Tyrol, Austria.

The episode 'Der Angriff' is closely inspired by the film 'Assault on Precinct 13' (2005), even featuring a prisoner with a 'Precinct 13' tattoo and characters resembling those from the film.

The episode 'Höllenfahrt auf der A4' is an almost exact copy of the American action film 'Deadly Speed' (1997), aside from a few details.

In the episode 'Das B-Team', a character disguises himself using the name Lorenz Rettig, referencing a lab technician character from the German series 'SOKO Leipzig'.

The show is broadcast in around 120 countries worldwide and is distributed internationally by Fremantle.

Some crash footage from seasons 1 to 5 was reused as crash test footage in the American reality show 'World's Wildest Police Videos'.

The show has been regularly parodied on German comedy programs, most notably as 'Alarm für Kebap 11 – Die Dönerpölizei' on Freitag Nacht News, with lead actors Erdoğan Atalay and René Steinke even making cameo appearances in some parody segments.