The basic premise of ZDF’s German-Austrian crime series Geier, which started in 2024, is a bit harebrained: Lukas Geier (Philipp Hochmair) used to be a detective inspector. Not an ordinary one, however, as he was given the task of inventing a new life and identity for people in witness protection. To this day, the vulture has to deal with secrets that no one is allowed to know. And with people who left their lives behind to start over. Because the game put Lukas Geyer under great stress and the amateur musician unexpectedly performed the fictional smash hit “Tutto Bene”, he left his old life behind. Surrounded by guitars and an accordion, he now retreated to the picturesque Alps near Bad Gastein to live as a hermit and perform occasionally as a musician. So far so crazy. But, of course, the plot of the now repeated landscape-crime thriller “Vulture – a dead woman with a wrong life” does not end there. When a woman is murdered in a Bad Gastein hotel, Lukas Geyer’s phone number is written in large numbers on the corpse’s hand.
Vulture – Dead woman with a wrong life
Crime film
The victim, Elisabeth Bergner (Lise Risom Olsen), leaves behind a teenage daughter, Rafaela (Doreen Theiml), and a husband, Alfred Bollisto (Harald Windisch), who runs a puppet theater in Bad Gastein. Inspector Francisca Conte (Julia Koch) comes from the big city to investigate the case. Geyer and the policewoman quickly become close, although the secrets of the witness protection specialist’s old life are only gradually revealed.
Apparently, Geyer and his old friend and tech nerd Shabbir (Raphael Akil), who is already installing surveillance cameras in the alpine wilderness, still maintain relationships with people from their old police life about whom they should know as little as possible. Are these people in danger now?
Lucas’ old boss Frank Becker (Herbert Knaup), a respected police officer, is also worried about his former protégé. Organized crime appears to be targeting people in the witness protection program. These are the people Geyer wanted to protect. But does he have a chance to resist the violence that has recently been disturbing the peace of the mountains?
Beautiful landscape, great basic idea
“Tutto Bene” isn’t just the name of the hit song you sing to Lukas Geyer wherever you meet a well-built, middle-aged pop star. Tutto Bene: The Crime Story of Lago Maggiore is also a novel based on a crime television series, but since it is a German-Austrian production, it has been transplanted from the Italian lake landscape a good 600 kilometers to the northeast, in the Salzburg region. But it doesn’t matter whether it’s Kaiserschmarrn or cappuccino, the main idea of the novels – there are two of them so far – of course, can be embodied in another beautiful place.
The dual hero, a mysterious ex-cop and a pop star, is played by 50-year-old Philipp Hochmayr. He is known as the friendly, diabolical Nazi Reinhard Heydrich from the Wannsee Conference or as the visually impaired private detective from the Vienna ARD series Blind Investigation. A strong actor who, oddly enough, in real life also tours with his band called “Die Elektrohand Gottes” and, just like in the film, is currently bringing “Everyman” to the stage as a musical performance. There are coincidences…
In the end, Vulture (the second series premiered in 2025, with two more films already filmed) is nothing more and nothing less than a decent landscape crime thriller. A film with great views and people, Patricia Aulicki (“Lena Lorenz”) plays another of Vulture’s loves, the owner of a design hotel with a beautiful terrace. However, a little more could have been made of the interesting material, as some scenes suggest. There the hero sits in front of his mountain hut and, over a beer with a friend, reflects on the absurdity of the life that brought him here. A life of jumping and escaping into art, while somewhere nearby, uprooted people are living a fantasy life that a vulture has “built.”
No, Lukas Geyer is not proud of what he created. Every now and then there are meetings with Geyer’s “exes”. There are some interesting scenarios that a solid crime thriller unfortunately leaves too little room for.
Vulture – Dead Woman with a Wrong Life – Tue. July 7 – ZDF: 20:15
Those: Teleschau – media service GmbH