As you’ve probably discovered, Detective Ellen Lucas is a very addicting series. Smart, funny, sad… with things not always spelled out by the writers. They’ve created a very three-dimensional female lead (refreshingly not young or winsome or airbrushed) who holds her own with the many male police chiefs in the MHz Choice library.

She’s almost a crime fighting superhero. Detective Ellen Lucas (Ulrike Kriener) has a way of looking at people like she can see their thoughts. Her mental processing and steely response to conflict seem almost unreal. She doesn’t seem overly burdened by the job but she does appear to have seen it all, the worst of the criminal world. She’s willing, if not delighted, to stand up to the bad guy without fear of the final bullet that might get her.

The writers have also given her human vulnerabilities. She’s a widow, she seems wistful about never having had children and she sometimes clashes with her younger sister. One of the storylines in Detective Ellen Lucas is the relationship between the two tough nuts: Ellen and her landlord, Max. Heaven forbid they say anything nice to each other or express affection! But the truth comes out in what they do for each other when one is in trouble. And, of course, Max has a thinly disguised admiration for his renter and seems to long for more. The writers put a couple of these moments in most of the episodes – where the two sit on the rooftop at night, overlooking Regensburg’s iconic St. Peter’s Cathedral. These scenes are little jewels, like the exchanges between Martin and his weird neighbor in Beck.

But what about those episodes missing from Season 1?
One final note: a number of our viewers have commented that episodes seem to be missing in our presentation of Detective Ellen Lucas Season 1. They are exactly right. We were not able to acquire the rights to the original German episodes 2 and 4 (no one is – the rights are tied up in a legal dispute) and so there are some things missing in the narrative arc of the series. Sorry about this, folks. There’s nothing we can do. But we can tell you this – there are no gaps in our presentation of Season 2 and you’ll see the rest of the episodes in the order they originally aired in Germany.