Also known as Luna and Sophie after these two Lovely Angels.
SOKO Potsdam is a detective dramedy series that spun off from SOKO Munchen in 2018 to become the tenth series in the SOKO franchise. The series originally aired on ZDF.The series revolves around the daily work of the German Sonderkommissionnote led by Kriminalrat Bernhard Henschel (Michael Lott), who investigate major crimes in the city of Potsdam, the capital of Brandenburg, Germany. There is particular focus on Chief Inspectors Sophie Pohlmann (Katrin Jaehne) and Luna Kunath (Caroline Erikson). Luna and Sophie are very close friends (to the point of easily being confused for lovers if you don't know them well) and act rather like the series' Lovely Angels: both have a tendency to be Cowboy Cops to Henschel's perpetual aggravation. Also on the squad are Criminal Superintendents David Grünbaum (Omar El Saeidi) and Christoph Westermann (Hendrik Von Bultzingslowen), as well as coroner Werner Wense (Bernd Stegemann) and forensic tech Thomas Brandner (Yung Ngo).
The series was subtitled in English by Walter Presents and is available via PBS in the United States. For reasons unknown, Walter Presents chose to retitle the series Luna and Sophie, which became an Artifact Title since both characters had left the series by season five, along with David and Christoph. Since then, the series has been fronted by Chief Inspectors Tamara Meurer (Anja Pahl) and Pauline Hobrecht (Agnes Decker) and Detective Inspector Samir Amari (Skandar Amini).
Tropes:
- Artifact Title: The subbed title Luna and Sophie became one at the start of season 4 due to Sophie leaving the series; Luna in turn left before season 5.
- Camp Straight: Werner Wense is a chunky old man prone to wearing Hawaiian shirts and calling the detective squad various Affectionate Nicknames, but season 4 confirms he has a wife.
- Cartwright Curse: Luna has terrible luck with romance: nearly everyone she hooks up with either falls prey to her Commitment Issues or has such issues themselves. In the first season, she breaks up with her boyfriend after he asks her to move in with him, then in the second season she runs into a historically flighty Old Flame at a tattoo parlor and hooks back up with her, only for her to try to make a Sneaky Departure in the season finale just as Luna gets back from work.
- Cheater Gets Cheated On: Sophie impulsively has sex with her coworker David while working overtime on a case, and only admits to it to her husband Robert after he fesses up to an affair of his own. He seemed to expect her to forgive the affair but moves out instead. However, eventually they make up and he moves back in.
- Chekhov's Gunman: In "Let Live", Luna goes to get lunch from a university cafeteria while she and Tamara wait for the security office to download CCTV footage for them, and interacts with a cafeteria worker named Paul with obvious signs of Down syndrome. He's the brother of the killer, who was trying to stop her coworker/girlfriend from selling their research to a company interested in making Designer Babies because it would likely mean people like her brother would be edited out of the population.
- Crazy Survivalist: The Body of the Week in one episode is a passenger train driver who owned an old bunker in the woods outside Potsdam and ruthlessly drilled his family to flee to it in advance of the apocalypse. He turns out to have been murdered by his wife over the stress his survival drills were putting his family through.
- Da Chief: Kriminalrat (Detective Superintendent) Bernhard Henschel, the long-suffering and occasionally eccentric commander of the detective squad who is stuck riding herd on Luna and Sophie.
- Designer Babies: Discussed in "Let Live": the Body of the Week was a researcher working on CRISPR gene-editing, which could be used to customize human embryos. Samir mentions the possibility of editing out genetic disabilities, which annoys Luna. Which turns out to be foreshadowing: the murder was motivated by the victim's attempt to sell the research to a company interested in designer human embryos, enraging her girlfriend and coworker, who has a brother with Down syndrome.
- Fair Cop:
- Luna gets hit on several times by suspects she's interrogating.
- Samir Amari, a young, fresh-faced detective on his first assignment out of the academy, is made the face of a police recruiting poster in season 4, much to his chagrin. Henschel puts the poster up in the squad room.
- Forced Out of the Closet: Max Henschel is closeted until the last episode of season 2, when a SWAT Team finds him being held prisoner by the father of his murdered boyfriend. He was apparently concerned his somewhat old-fashioned parents would have a problem with him being gay, but fortunately Bernhard just needs a few minutes to get used to the idea, and even lays flowers on the boyfriend's grave with him at the end of the episode.
- Friends Are Chosen, Family Aren't: Luna has a great relationship with the other members of the detective squad, especially Sophie. Her father is a bumbling Con Man who has been in and out of prison most of her life, and once inserts himself into an investigation with gossip he heard on the prison grapevine about their latest suspect before he was released.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Well, Luna is bi, but Sophie has a husband and young son. They've been best friends to the point of regularly sleeping over at each other's houses for decades, but despite occasional moments of seeming Homoerotic Subtext there's never any movement towards them becoming a couple.
- Lovely Angels: Luna and Sophie are very effective detectives and virtually inseparable, but are also prone to being Cowboy Cops who fire from the hip and sometimes keep secrets from the rest of the team. Luna tends to be impulsive and emotional, while Sophie is more thoughtful and methodical.
- Medal of Dishonor: Played for laughs in "Let Live". A suspect does a runner and Henschel and Samir chase him past where an off-duty Luna happens to be waiting to meet a friend for a costume party. Luna trips him and then ties him up with the tail from her Pink Panther costume. Henschel turns up at the end of the episode with a gift for Luna: the costume tail, framed, as an award for "Arrest of the Year".
- Missing Child: Henschel's young adult son Max goes on a vacation to Croatia in the second half of season two, or so he claimed: Henschel loses contact with him, then learns he never got on his flight. Max is discovered alive at the start of the next episode by a SWAT Team, chained up in the hideout of a bank robbery suspect outside Potsdam. He actually went to live with his previously unknown boyfriend, the suspect's son, and the suspect discovered Max standing over his son's body and kidnapped him demanding to know what happened (to no avail: Max had only discovered the body moments earlier).
- Name and Name: The English title Luna and Sophie, after the series' Lovely Angels whom the show mostly focuses on for the first three seasons (before they both left the series).
- New Meat: Samir Amari comes in as a mid-season replacement for Christoph and David, who get poached by prosecutor Hagemann for a new unit. He's a brand-new detective and eager to please.
- Not Blood Siblings: One of the Red Herring suspects in the cold case in "Fallen from the Sky" is the victim's then-foster brother, whose semen was discovered on her bedsheets after her disappearance; he was suspected at the time of raping and murdering her but the police couldn't prove it. When questioned by SOKO, he confirms the relationship but insists, truthfully, that he had nothing to do with her death.
- Open Relationship Failure: In "Let Live", the Body of the Week Sylvia's coworker and girlfriend Mira tells Tamara that they were in an open relationship, but doesn't seem to be happy about it. Tamara suggests jealousy to Henschel as the motive for a crime of passion, though when she suggests it to Mira, Mira says she'd accepted it as the price of being with Sylvia. Subverted: Mira is the killer, but turns out to be lying about Sylvia dating other people in order to send the detectives on a wild goose chase. The murder was motivated by a business dispute.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: David Grünbaum is a native-born German of unspecified Middle Eastern ancestry (the actor's family is originally from Egypt) and gets some guff from a white suspect in one episode who thinks he isn't a "real" German.
- Put on a Bus:
- At the start of season 4, Sophie has left the force: Luna tells her Suspiciously Similar Substitute Tamara that Sophie got tired of the job and is now studying psychology in Munich.
- Christoph and David are both offered a job on a new unit by prosecutor Hagemann and leave the series midway through season 4, replaced by New Meat inspector Samir Amari.
- Revisiting the Cold Case: "Fallen from the Sky" is set off by the discovery of the skeletal corpse of a teenage girl missing for the past 15 years.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Like Sophie, Tamara Meurer is tall, slim, and blonde, and she has a similar personality and is a mom—though unlike Sophie, her son is 20 and she's been divorced twice.
- Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Christoph is not traditionally attractive (tall and skinny with a big nose and glasses), and when the other detectives find out he has a girlfriend, they rib him a bit over what she might look like. When he brings her to a squad cookout, she turns out to be gorgeous to the point of stunning everyone else into silence for several seconds.
