Scene of the Crime

The concept for Tatort was created by Gunther Witte on behalf of Günter Rohrbach for WDR, intended as a successor to the Stahlnetz crime series and as a response to competition from ZDF's Der Kommissar.

Witte's proposal was inspired by an older RIAS radio series called 'Es geschah in Berlin', which dramatized real crime cases linked to the city of Berlin, and initially met with little interest before being approved on a second attempt in 1970.

The very first episode, 'Taxi nach Leipzig' (1970), had already been completed by NDR before the decision to launch the Tatort series was made, and was only retroactively integrated as the opening film.

To save on travel and accommodation costs for large film crews, many scenes are not shot at the actual story locations but at the sites of the production companies and broadcasters; for example, the Münster Tatort only films exterior scenes in Münster while the rest is shot in and around Cologne.

SWR built sets for three different police station commissariats and a shared pathology lab, equipped with a used autopsy table and body cooler, inside a converted former school in Baden-Baden starting in 2006.

The iconic opening theme was composed in 1970 by Klaus Doldinger and has only been slightly modified twice, in 1979 and 2004; the drums on the original recording were played by Udo Lindenberg.

The actor seen in the opening credits (running legs behind a slit, viewed through crosshairs) was Bavarian actor Horst Lettenmayer, filmed in 1970 at a section of the former Munich-Riem airport; he was paid a one-time fee of 400 DM and later appeared as an actor in a 1989 episode.

The graphic designer of the opening credits, Kristina Böttrich-Merdjanowa, was paid a one-time fee of 2500 DM and later sued unsuccessfully in 2009-2011 for higher compensation and credit recognition.

Five Tatort episodes are officially blocked from being rebroadcast ('Giftschrank' episodes) due to issues like unclear licensing rights, misleading statements about epilepsy, allegations of antisemitic content, violation of youth protection standards, and protests over an incestuous storyline in an Alevi family.

Joe Bausch, who plays forensic pathologist Dr. Joseph Roth in the Cologne Tatort, worked in real life as a prison doctor at the Werl correctional facility until his retirement in 2018.

Three Tatort episodes were produced specifically for cinema release before later airing on television: 'Zahn um Zahn' (1985), 'Zabou' (1987), both featuring Schimanski and Thanner, and 'Tschiller: Off Duty' (2016).

In two 2017-2018 episodes ('Babbeldasch' and 'Waldlust'), both directed by Axel Ranisch, the dialogue was entirely improvised by the actors.