Terrific and complex start to Season 1 of Babylon Berlin

Weighing in on the first half (8 episodes out of a massive 16-episode season) of the Netflex/German series Babylon Berlin, based on a set of crime novels that begin in the mid-90s and are set in the highly atmospheric time era of late 1920s Germany - which we've seen in numerous books (Berlin Alexanderplaz, e.g.), plays/movies (Cabaret), memoirs, even TV series (the aforementioned BA, by Fassbinder, which I'm waiting for Criterion to make available via streaming) -but maybe none as powerful and effective as this series, which will grip you from the first episode and never let go. It's smart, well acted, beautifully produced (astonishing re-creation of the era that rivals anything the BBC has done in its numerous historical dramas, except maybe the superior The Crown), and well written throughout. There's no doubt that it gets off to a violent start, but I encourage viewers to say w/ the series; there is some violence and grotesqueness, but it's always in service of the plot, never gratuitous or sensational. Also, the series introduces many plot lines at the start, and not all will be clear over the course of the first few episodes, which is by design, but as you stay w/ it these plot elements will clarify and cohere in smart and surprising ways. The central characters is a police detective, Gereon Rath, sent by his father - the chief of police in Cologne - to work on the vice squad in the Berlin police force on a particularly sensitive case - which we learn about over the course of # of episodes. He's in a dark and scary world, in which just about everyone is double-dealing and double-crossing, and Rath has a # of issues of his own, including a drug addiction and posttraumatic stress from his war experiences. Possibly the best character in the series is the young Charlotte who lives with her mother and siblings in Dickensian squalor and who gets by via temp work as a clerk/secretary in the Berlin PD and, at night, prostitution as an underground dance club. Working in the PD she develops a taste for detective work and shows herself to be really good at discerning info from clues - but her possibility of advancement is limited by a # of factors, blackmail, sexism, and the mores of her time and place. She's a strong, witty, and appealing character and it's obvious that the season (and more to come perhaps) needs her - even though her position is in jeopardy at the end of episode 8. There's a whole world of politics (both German and Russian), crime and vice, smuggling and arms dealing, addiction, PTSD, plus some family dramas, all played out within a world of fast living, high inflation, terrible unemployment, strikes and street demonstrations, police brutality, and of course, over the horizon, the imminent rise of fascism.