Freddy and Max are back! Cologne is known for its cathedral and carnival, but Germany’s pub-loving metropolis is also rife with crime. Among those whose job it is to find the city’s murderers and their motives are homicide detectives Max Ballauf and Freddy Schenk. With his chiseled features and melancholy gaze, Max Ballauf is the smooth-talking ladies’ man who can get the most reserved upper-crust woman and the toughest, tight-lipped madam to willingly part with her secrets. His robust, level-headed partner Freddy Schenk is always there to help chase down the bad guys. Together, Freddy and Max are two of the most popular investigators in the almost 50-year history of the Tatort franchise.

The Waldemar family reunites as the B&B opens for one last Christmas – but much has changed since their tumultuous summer. Oskar is alone and miserable, Liv still not back from her travels. Jonna returns from a disastrous acting gig in London to take charge of preparations, but her grand vision demands more resources than the siblings can muster. Lasse’s criminal past catches up with him as a storm bears down on the island, and his decision on this fateful night will have terrible ramifications for the entire clan. The new season deals with issues of identity and guilt in a dysfunctional family attempting to heal old wounds, all set in the breathtaking winter landscape of Åland. Will the siblings ultimately be forced to take responsibility and make the necessary sacrifices for the sake of their loved ones – and is blood really thicker than water?

The Last Godfather may be gone but he’s left a fractured Mafia behind – and the warring families have moved beyond the old man’s antiquated methods. No more folded paper notes – it’s now phone taps, encrypted messages, satellites and sophisticated espionage technology. Chief Claudia Mares and her team in Palermo continue the work that brought Bernardo Provenzano down, but need all the technology they can muster to capture the adversaries that came after.

Almost a decade in the making, this absolutely superb historical series comes to an emotional and dramatic end when season 7 (episodes 66 – 72) premieres exclusively on MHz Choice on January 30th. Noted by the NY Times as “the first major French television series seriously to address collaboration during the Nazi occupation in World War II”, A French Village skips a conventional retelling of the War and instead, turns the genre on its head by stripping away battle sequences and exploring the complicated moral choices foisted upon ordinary people in an extraordinarily difficult time in world history. Quite frankly, this series is not to be missed.

Baantjer Mysteries, starring Piet Römer, evokes vintage US shows like Dragnet and Columbo – with its moral, but not moralizing, straight-shooting central character who just wants to get the job done and downplays the fact that he’s the smartest guy in the room. It’s perfect TV, and makes for some of MHz Choice’s finest crime drama comfort food. (should this be a new genre?) Season 4 features the same ensemble from previous seasons, Detective Baantjer’s got the same rumpled raincoat, he retreats to the same Café Lowietje to drink cognac and ponder the case and Amsterdam continues to have plenty of crimes to solve. The series delights with its utter predictability.