David Fincher’s Mindhunter came to an abrupt end after Season 2, creating a void in the crime procedural genre. Yes, we’ve witnessed quite a few entries in the form of Mare of Easttown and Defending Jacob, but only Mindhunter felt like the perfect amalgamation of the rawness of the world we live in and the dry humour we use intentionally or unintentionally upon ourselves to get through it. And that’s exactly why its fans are clamouring quite loudly for a third and final season. Now, whether that’s going to happen or not is completely up to Netflix. Whether we want to fill the aforementioned void with the German show The Allegation (or Glauben) though is completely up to us.
The Daniel Geronimo Prochaska directorial effort, written by Ferdinand von Schirach, opens with a physical examiner detailing the wounds on a rape victim while a photographer gathers all forms of visual evidence. The scene receives an added layer of morbidity after it is revealed that the victim is alive and is hearing herself be treated as an object rather than a human being who has been through a traumatic event. But after an off-screen arrest of the accused, the narrative casually shifts to the tale of Dr. Richard Schlesinger (Peter Kurth), a lawyer who is way past his prime and neck-deep in debt, as he is voluntarily taking up a case of murder. Things look pretty open-and-shut as all signs point to the fact that the accused is guilty. However, Schesinger persists, with some pretty aggressive help from his debt collector Azra (Narges Rashidi), thereby helping him revive his career and making him the perfect candidate to reverse the judgement of the case the show opens with.
From the get-go, it’s made abundantly clear that The Allegation is aiming to highlight the dehumanisation of victims in criminal cases due to social media. Although we don’t get to know much about the case that forms the backbone of the show in the first two episodes, through the trial of Sabine Kramer (Sabrina Reiter), Prochaska and Schirach illustrate how quickly we rush to blame or exonerate someone based on half-truths and half-lies. And since it’s quite easy to garner likes, retweets, and shares, people (and that includes judges) have become more prone to believing social media gospel over hard facts. So, in Kramer’s case, if the court followed the virtual public mandate, she would’ve been sent to jail for years for a crime she hadn’t committed. On top of that, despite doing her time, she would’ve re-entered the world as a husband-killer. Because the judgemental gaze of social media doesn’t work the same way as the eyes of the law. Thankfully, that’s where analog people like Schlesinger come in, assessing a scenario as it is and not through filters and firewalls.
That said, being analog comes with a much-needed caveat: the slow process. But Prochaska and Schirach don’t let all that time go to waste and use it to flesh out its two central characters, Schlesinger and Azra. They exist at the opposite ends of this world of crime that has made them what they are. They both work from the shadows. But while Schlesinger takes a passive, legal approach, Azra is brutal, physical (with a history of killing Russian men with a ballpoint pen viz. John Wick) and doesn’t really care about ethics. That makes way for some dynamic storytelling and more importantly, incredibly engaging and crisp interactions between the two. In addition to that, they do offer a lot of levity to counter the heavy atmosphere of the show in their characteristic ways, something which is most prominent during their altercations with strangers. While Rashidi elicits laughter with her rush to get to the point of a conversation, Kurth achieves a similar effect by straying as far away as possible from the point to stretch the conversation. To be honest, that has a tragic undercurrent to it as it shows that Azra is afraid that the more she talks, the more she might reveal about herself, whereas Schlesinger just wants to be seen and heard.
From a visual and storytelling standpoint, The Allegation emphasises the power of social media. But it’s simultaneously and interestingly depowered through the not-so-tech-savvy Schlesinger and Azra and the show’s overall rustic aesthetic achieved by DOP Matthias Pötsch, editor Simone Bräuer, composer Matija Strniša, and sound designer Benedikt Gaussling. And for a society that is constantly at the brink of being consumed by technology and/or violence, this is definitely one of the most important shows of our time.
