The Old Fox

The series premiered with a 94-minute pilot film titled 'Die Dienstreise' broadcast on Easter Monday 1977, and since 1978 the show has been part of ZDF's Friday Crime Night.

The show has had five different lead actors playing the chief inspector role over its history: Siegfried Lowitz, Rolf Schimpf, Walter Kreye, Jan-Gregor Kremp, and Thomas Heinze.

Michael Ande played assistant Gerd Heymann for 39 years across more than 400 episodes before retiring in 2016, making him the longest-serving investigator actor in German television history measured by episode count and time.

Rolf Schimpf played Chief Inspector Leo Kress for over 21 years before retiring from the role in his 222nd episode.

Jan-Gregor Kremp voluntarily left the series after ten years in the lead role, with his final episodes airing until mid-March 2023 before Thomas Heinze took over as Chief Inspector Caspar Bergmann.

The character Lennard 'Lenny' Wandmann, introduced in 2017, was portrayed as an Asperger's autistic IT specialist and researcher who left the team in 2021 after his grandmother's death.

Director Helmuth Ashley co-wrote 55 episodes of the series, while writer Volker Vogeler wrote the most episodes overall.

Since 2008, the series has been released on DVD by MORE Music and Media in collector's boxes; as of September 2021, 27 boxes covering episodes 1 to 430 were available.