Babylon Berlin is a German neo-noir television series. The series premiered on 13 October on Sky 1. The first release consisted of a continuous run of 16 episodes, with the first eight officially known as Season 1, and the second eight known as Season 2. Season 3 premiered in January , [ 3 ] followed by Season 4 in October Netflix exclusively streamed seasons 1 through 3 in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States until they were removed in February In April , the first three seasons of the show began streaming on MHz Choice in the United States, with the fourth season added in June.
The series is set in Berlin during the latter years of the Weimar Republic , beginning in It follows Gereon Rath Volker Bruch , a police inspector on assignment from Cologne who is on a secret mission to dismantle an extortion ring, and police clerk Charlotte Ritter Liv Lisa Fries , who aspires to become a police inspector.
The series was co-directed by Tom Tykwer , Hendrik Handloegten [ de ] , and Achim von Borries , who also wrote the scripts. The 16 episodes of the first two seasons were adapted by Tykwer, von Borries and Handloegten from the novel Der nasse Fisch The Wet Fish by Volker Kutscher [ 11 ] and were filmed over eight months beginning in May Netflix purchased rights for the United States, Canada, and Australia, where the series became available in with English dubbing and subtitles.
The third season of Babylon Berlin was filmed over six months from late to May The third season was developed loosely around the second novel in Volker Kutscher's trilogy The Silent Death. The showrunners chose to diverge from the source material to better address the social and political unrest during the time period as they felt that the Weimar Republic is often overlooked by both media and historical sources.
In a January interview with Berliner Zeitung , actress Liv Lisa Fries said that production would likely begin on the fourth season in late or early Filming began in early [ 20 ] [ 21 ] and was completed in September , with the production having shot for days at Studio Babelsberg and at locations around Berlin.
