Ein Fall für zwei follows the investigations of the Frankfurt private detective Josef Matula (played by Claus Theo Gärtner), who works not for the police but for changing defence lawyers. In the opening sequence of the early years, Matula is shown leaving custody, defended by attorney Dr. Dieter Renz; Renz then hires him as an external investigator. This establishes the basic idea of the series, formulated by ZDF in its 30-year press material: a lawyer represents a client before the authorities, while an unbound, street-smart investigator searches for the real perpetrator outside the official channels.^[2]

Matula is a former police officer who was forced out of the service and now earns his living case by case. He works alone, drives through Frankfurt am Main and the wider Rhine-Main region, and is prepared to bend rules to get information. He questions witnesses off the record, infiltrates bars, clubs and shady businesses, and in many episodes confronts suspects physically; the ZDF dossier notes explicitly that “the investigator is closer to the people than the police and therefore sometimes has to take risks.”^[3] Because of these methods he is himself occasionally arrested or suspected, but is cleared once the real culprit is found.^[4]

Every episode is built around the same core constellation. A crime – usually a murder, sometimes kidnapping, insurance fraud or an economic offence – leads to the arrest of a seemingly obvious suspect. This person hires the lawyer of the current era (Renz, then Franck, later Voss, finally Lessing; see Attorneys). The lawyer handles the formal defence, speaks to the public prosecutor and the police, and keeps the client out of pre-trial detention. In parallel, Matula reconstructs what really happened: he re-visits the crime scene, checks alibis, talks to neighbours, colleagues and relatives, and often uncovers a second motive (inheritance, jealousy, business rivalry) that the police overlooked. In the majority of episodes the arrested person turns out to be innocent, but not every story ends with a full acquittal — some conclude with a lesser charge or with the exposure of a cover-up.^[5]

A characteristic element of the series is the change of the lawyer figure while Matula stays the same. Dr. Dieter Renz (played by Günter Strack) embodies the classic Frankfurt attorney of the 1980s, cultivated and methodical. He is replaced in episode 60 by Dr. Rainer Franck (played by Rainer Hunold), who is more modern, socially engaged and often at odds with the authorities. When Franck leaves to teach law, his protégé Dr. Johannes Voss (played by Mathias Herrmann) takes over; his violent death in episode 182 (Morgen bist du tot) is one of the few tragic turning points of the entire run. Dr. Markus Lessing (played by Paul Frielinghaus), introduced immediately afterwards, brings the series into the 2000s with a more personal, music-loving, sometimes ironic lawyer figure. ZDF explained this long-term success in 2011 with the formula “same detective, new lawyer”: the constant of Matula plus a periodically renewed counterpart.^[6]

From the late 1990s into the Lessing era, the plot pattern became slightly broader. The episode lists show that recurring police characters such as Kommissar Allberg, Scharnow and Enders were introduced, so that Matula no longer faced an entirely anonymous police force but returning officers who knew his methods. This allowed for more stories in which Matula himself was under suspicion or had to clear his name.^[7]

The series also adapted to changing television habits. ZDF stated that the 60-minute length was deliberately chosen for the Friday-evening slot, but in the 2000s episodes were shortened by about five minutes for commercial breaks and edited with faster cuts.^[8] Around 2006–2007, nightlife and strip club scenes appeared more frequently, especially when Matula interrogated owners or guests, but these were later dropped when the show reverted to a more classical investigative tone.

In 2014 the format was rebooted with new characters: lawyer Benni Hornberg (portrayed by Antoine Monot Jr.) and private detective Leo Oswald (played by Wanja Mues) again operate in Frankfurt am Main, one inside the legal system, one outside. Both the media portal DWDL.de and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung underlined that the basic dynamic — “one fights, the other defends” — remained intact, but that staging, music and character-private-life elements were modernised for a younger audience.^[9][10][11]

Although the series is sometimes compared to the American legal drama Perry Mason, only a small portion of the running time actually takes place in court. The dramatic focus is on investigation, urban milieus and the question of whether the apparently guilty person really committed the crime — a question that sustained the series through 300 episodes.

The series was created by screenwriter Karl Heinz Willschrei for the public broadcaster ZDF and produced by Odeon Film AG in cooperation with TaurusFilm. It was conceived together with producer Georg Althammer as an alternative to traditional German crime dramas, which usually featured police inspectors as protagonists. In Ein Fall für zwei the protagonists have no state authority and conduct their investigations solely on the basis of a client’s mandate, which set the series apart from contemporary formats such as Derrick and Der Alte.^[12]

Actor Claus Theo Gärtner accepted the role of Josef Matula in typically informal fashion, signing a restaurant bill with the note “100 Folgen okay, C.T.G.” to confirm his commitment to producer Georg Althammer. According to a 2007 report in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the writing of a single episode script often took several months and the script fee per episode was between €12,000 and €15,000.^[13]

The original casting concept actually envisaged a young, dynamic lawyer and an older, rough private investigator. In practice, the roles were reversed and the parts went to the younger Gärtner and the older Günter Strack. Over the decades the original idea was, in a way, fulfilled, as Matula aged on screen into the “seasoned” detective first described in the series outline.^[12]

Filming took place mainly on location in Frankfurt am Main, with additional shooting in the wider Rhine–Main region, especially Wiesbaden, because of its proximity to ZDF. The pilot episode, Die große Schwester, was directed by Helmut Ashley, who established the visual style of the show with handheld cameras, real urban settings and the clear visual contrast between Matula’s street work and the lawyer’s office world.^[12]

In the early years, the law office was situated near the Schauspielhaus and the Frankfurt Opera. Later, the office was shown inside the InterContinental Hotel; interiors, however, were consistently shot in various suites of that hotel. Up to episode 109 (Tod im Fahrstuhl) the office of Dr. Franck was filmed in an actual office building at Walter-Kolb-Straße 9–11 in Frankfurt. From episode 110 (Gelegenheit macht Mörder) onward, the fictional law office moved to the then “Büro Center Nibelungenplatz” (today City Gate) in Frankfurt-Nordend. The panoramic view of the Frankfurt skyline that opens many episodes became one of the visual trademarks of the series.^[12]

Until the mid-1990s, the series was shot on 16 mm film; later ZDF switched to digital Betacam and eventually to high-definition video. A single episode usually required around 20 shooting days and a crew of approximately 70 people.^[12]

During a restructuring of ZDF’s Friday evening crime slot, both new episodes and repeats of Ein Fall für zwei were shortened by about five minutes. The original end credits were replaced by advertising spots, so the broadcast running time was about 55 minutes instead of a full hour.^[14] From 2008 onwards the series adopted a faster editing style with more dynamic cuts. The title theme by Klaus Doldinger was slightly modernised whenever the attorney changed; in the “Lessing” phase it was updated twice, although the melody remained recognisable. In the 2014 relaunch, only the opening bars of the well-known theme were quoted, while the rest of the music was newly composed.^[12]

Ein Fall für zwei combined two popular German television traditions: the legal drama and the private-eye series. Unlike police procedurals such as Tatort, it focused on defence work rather than official investigations. Critics have described the format as a “duet of intellect and instinct,” pairing the rational lawyer with Matula’s intuitive, often unorthodox detective methods.^[15]

Over three decades the show mirrored changes in German society:

• In the 1980s the cases often reflected financial crimes and class conflict in the banking capital Frankfurt.
• During the 1990s and early 2000s, storylines addressed immigration, corporate corruption, and cyber-crime.
• Later seasons adopted a faster editing style and darker tone influenced by Anglo-American crime dramas.

At its peak during the 1980s and early 1990s the series drew between seven and ten million viewers per episode on ZDF, making it one of Germany’s most-watched weekly programs.^[16] Television critics frequently praised Claus Theo Gärtner’s physical energy and charisma. Günter Strack and later Rainer Hunold were noted for bringing humour and gravitas to the lawyer roles. The long-running partnership of Matula and his changing legal colleagues became part of German popular culture; reruns still attract steady audiences on ZDF neo and other digital channels.

The character of Matula evolved into a pop-cultural archetype of the “tough but honest” private detective in post-industrial Germany. He was referenced or parodied in sketch shows such as Switch Reloaded and in songs by rock band Badesalz. In 2017 ZDF produced the feature-length film Matula – Wer wind sät, showing the detective in semi-retirement but drawn back into danger.^[17]

ZDF Enterprises released several DVD box sets between 2008 and 2015, covering early seasons remastered from the original film negatives. Selected episodes are available for streaming on the ZDF Mediathek portal and on international platforms such as Amazon Prime Video in German-speaking regions.^[18]

With 300 episodes produced over three decades, Ein Fall für zwei became one of ZDF’s most durable crime formats and is repeatedly described by the distributor ZDF-Studios as a “popular and long-running” series in its international catalogue.^[19] The show’s structure – a private investigator working for a defence lawyer instead of the state police – gave German television a recognisable alternative to the official-procedural model and made the series easy to adapt for foreign broadcasters.

In Italy the programme aired as Un caso per due on RAI’s generalist channels and appears in RAI’s annual programming and financial reports among imported crime series alongside other German titles, which confirms that it had become a stable presence in the schedule by the late 2000s.^[20][21] Schedules published in the digital Radiocorriere TV show that RAI 2 and later RAI 3 were still repeating Un caso per due in late-night and summer slots in 2015 and 2016, which indicates long-term audience familiarity and an ongoing demand for reruns.^[22][23]

In France the series circulated under the title Un cas pour deux and remained on French television well into the 2010s. French TV listings describe it as a “série policière dont la longévité impressionne,” explicitly noting that the first episode was shot in 1981 and that the line-up of lawyers changed over time, exactly as in the German original.^[24] The French distributor Elephant Films has been issuing DVD box-sets of the early seasons since 2022–2023 (Un cas pour deux – L’intégrale saisons 1 à 4), which shows that there is still a commercial market for the series in France decades after its original broadcast.^[25] Streaming platforms that mirror the France 3 catalogue, such as Molotov, have also listed the show as a France 3 police series set in Frankfurt, confirming its continued presence in the French TV ecosystem.^[26]

The 2014 reboot, marketed internationally by ZDF-Studios as A Case for Two – Reloaded, preserved the central idea of a two-person team solving cases in Frankfurt and was sold again to foreign buyers, which underlines the durability of the brand beyond the original cast.^[27] Even so, foreign TV guides and DVD releases continue to foreground Claus Theo Gärtner’s Matula as the face of the series, suggesting that the character, rather than any specific attorney, is what travelled best across borders.^[28]

Josef Matula
Ein Fall für Zwei Matula character
Claus Theo Gärtner
First appearance	Die große Schwester 11 September 1981
Last appearance	Letzte Worte 29 March 2013
Created by	Karl Heinz Willschrei
Portrayed by	Claus Theo Gärtner
In-universe information
Full name	Hermann Josef Matula
Occupation	Private detective Former police officer
Affiliation	Frankfurt police department
Religion	Roman Catholic
Origin	Oberhausen, Germany
Nationality	German

Hermann Josef Matula (played by Claus Theo Gärtner) is one of the two main characters on the show, and the only character to have appeared in every episode so far. Matula is a former police officer who has become a private detective instead. He always works in co-operation with a defense attorney, who is the other main character on the show.

In the beginning of the first episode in 1981 he mentioned his birthplace to be Oberhausen and his age to be 31 years. So he was going to celebrate his 60th birthday in 2010. Despite this advanced age, Matula is in good physical condition and can put up quite a fight when challenged. According to research done by a German fan of the show, Matula has been beaten up 37 times and knocked unconscious 7 times. Still he somehow manages to stay healthy and fit for his duty.

Matula's method of detective work is very direct and hands-down. While the attorney he works with handles the juridistical part of the current case, Matula gets his hands dirty and tracks down the people he suspects of being involved in the crimes. This frequently involves him posing as a reporter or other similar profession to avoid discovery. Matula's direct, action-oriented way of work often gets him into trouble with the police. He has been arrested 12 times, and the entire plot of one episode centered on Matula being suspected of murder and having to escape the police into Austria.

Despite his toughness, Matula is a skilled cook and has a great deal of charm with women. However, he has never been married.

Across its original broadcast run (1981–2013), Ein Fall für zwei featured four different defense attorneys who collaborated with private investigator Josef Matula. Each attorney reflected a different period in German society and television style.^[29][30][31]

Dr. Renz is an experienced and highly regarded Hessian lawyer. A perfectionist, he takes his profession very seriously. He has been divorced for many years (Episode 3, Das Haus in Frankreich – "The House in France") and appears not to have had any serious relationships since. During his university days, however, he was more active socially, having dated Birgit Weißenborn (Episode 3) and Anna Susković (Episode 60). Renz is portrayed as a bon vivant who enjoys cooking, fine wines and visiting gourmet restaurants. In his free time, he plays golf.^[32]

Throughout the years, Renz drives three different cars: first a Mercedes-Benz /8 with the registration F-DH 250, then an Opel Senator (F-CD 300),^[33] and later a Mercedes S-Class W126 (F-SR 99).^[34]

In Episode 60, Renz becomes the victim of a conspiracy and is taken into custody. At the end of the episode, he retires to Tuscany with his former university love, Ana Susković.^[35]

In the 2017 television film Matula, the detective names his terrier Dr. Renz in memory of his first partner and friend.

Dr. Rainer Franck is introduced in Episode 60, when Dr. Renz needs a lawyer to defend himself. After Renz’s retirement, Franck takes over his law office, including his secretary. He shares Matula’s love for motorcycles and billiards. Their first meeting is turbulent, as Franck has stolen Matula’s girlfriend, but they soon become an excellent team. Episode 60 also introduces Umba, Franck’s golden retriever, portrayed by at least two different dogs.^[36]

After Dr. Franck accepts a teaching position in Berlin, his protégé Dr. Johannes Voss inherits the law firm. Voss had already substituted for Franck in Episode 149 (Das Paar) while Franck was in hospital. Although Voss prefers boxing, he demonstrates his billiard skills in Episode 175 (Schmutzige Wäsche – "Dirty Laundry"). Over time, he and Matula develop a productive partnership.^[37]

This team finally reflects the original concept of the series: a young, dynamic lawyer working alongside an older, seasoned detective.^[37]

In Episode 182 (Morgen bist du tot – "Tomorrow You’ll Be Dead"), Voss is shot and killed by hitman Jochen Brenner (played by Ralf Richter), who is seeking revenge against Matula for exposing him to the police. Voss dies from his gunshot wound before the paramedics arrive.^[38] After Voss’s funeral, Matula and prosecutor Dr. Markus Lessing track down Brenner. When Brenner attempts to shoot Matula, Dr. Lessing kills him in self-defence.^[39][40]

Dr. Voss had previously studied with Dr. Markus Lessing, who later becomes his successor.^[41]

Dr. Markus Lessing was born in Darmstadt and studied law in Bonn and Frankfurt, where he became friends with Johannes Voss. He holds a doctorate in law and has a passion for music, particularly the cello. After the death of his wife in 1995, he is left with his daughter Sonja, who studies in London and appears in the episodes Erics Tod and Auge um Auge, portrayed by two different actresses. Like Matula, Lessing dislikes bureaucracy and occasionally bends the rules to solve cases. Initially a state prosecutor, he takes over Voss’s law office after his death, even though he lacks experience as a private attorney.^[41] He is often referred to as Mark by Matula and others.

In Episode 292 (Mord im Callcenter – "Murder in the Call Center"), Dr. Lessing does not appear. The audience learns via a phone call that he is in hospital after a bicycle accident. His nephew Felix Lessing (played by Ludwig Blochberger), a law student who was supposed to start an internship, temporarily takes over his uncle’s case.

At the end of the final episode 300 (Letzte Worte – "Last Words"), Dr. Lessing emigrates to South America to become a cattle rancher.

In October 2011, Gärtner and Frielinghaus announced that they would be leaving the series after the 300th episode,^[42] which was aired on 29 March 2013.

The series was relaunched with new characters and actors in 2014. Antoine Monot Jr. has since been playing attorney Benjamin "Benni" Hornberg alongside Wanja Mues who portrays investigator Leo Oswald.^[43]