The series as an encyclopedia of life What is the main difference of the series ' Inspector Derrick' from most other detective series? I think it is not in the way Derrick works, who, unlike his American colleague Colombo, does not scrupulously look for the smallest evidence and analyze the details until they form a coherent picture of the crime. In general, in addition to Derrick, there were many investigators on the screen, primarily focusing on the psychology of people who were somehow associated with the victim of the crime. Derrick is very charismatic, he has a partner - this makes the series very similar to the others.
But there is one detail that distinguishes this series and makes it unique: in fact ' Derrick' is a kind of encyclopedia of life, an instructive multi-episode story about what can happen if you do something wrong once: go on the lead of a friend who involves you in a crime that allegedly ' is a trifle ' and ' no one will suffer' go on the lead of an unhealthy environment and his own momentary weakness, becoming a drug addict, ready for a dose to kill and betray anyone, in fact, to go on their freedom, becoming a participant in such a way. This series - in almost every series tells about what will become of a initially good man, who has betrayed his own principles, who has little heart, has made a dangerous deal with his conscience. Sometimes Derrick is of course about those people who were forced to commit crimes in response to this or that injustice, but the series condemns such people, albeit with a much less harsh moral tone.
I know of only one other Derrick-like series, ' Defendants' Jimmy McGovern. But this is not a detective series, so in his genre Derrick still was and remains unique: with all his sincere and accurate moral pathetics, with his humanity and earthiness, the series actually became a reference to the shortcomings of modern society and a warning for young people who are just entering adulthood, and therefore still very naive and susceptible to the influence of social environment, that each of these flaws can easily drag to the bottom of anyone who allows himself ' go with the flow' At the same time, in the series Derrick, there are those who came to their senses in time, came out of their comfort zone and ventured to commit a difficult but right act - and although not always such stories end happy-end'om, the moral message of the authors of the series is quite obvious: only such a choice of character was possible, because only he gave him or her the opportunity not to lose self-respect.
The real leitmotif of Derrick should be a phrase uttered by Stefan in some bar, where the next witnesses of the crime were sitting behind each other, ' hiding behind ' sick social environment, in order to remove personal moral responsibility. This leitmotif should be the phrase ' No one has the right to say: ' it does not concern me'!'.
And I think it's because of the colossal, unbearable burden for most people that this absolutely fair moral imperative -- Derrick's analogues -- never came along. Even in ' Defendants' there was no such message: McGovern's series simply stated the fact that any of us, even the most prosperous and respectable person, can at any moment slide down an inclined plane into the abyss, but the question of personal responsibility for our common present and future - McGovern is very vague, since everything that comes up is perceived only as a personal tragedy of a person who unexpectedly finds himself in the dock.
'Derrick' finds the root cause and gives a universal recipe for solving the problem: each of us MUST be involved in what is happening around us.
That is why neither before nor after no one has dared to make such a movie, despite the huge success ' Derrick' worldwide. Because it is very difficult to do such ' uncomfortable', ' uncomfortable' entertaining content, in fact putting the viewer himself in an awkward position, one way or another, more than once in his life had time to shave his soul. It is a pity that no one understands that creating such content, although difficult, is really vital: an apathetic, amorphous society is simply doomed to devour itself, giving rise to endlessly self-replicating injustice, hatred, violence and mental anguish of lonely confused people who have lost themselves.