You can tell that Breaking Bad is one of the most influential series of the 21st century just by how often attempts have been made to transfer the concept to other projects. Suddenly things are happening everywhere inconspicuous men as criminal masterminds out. Back in 2016, Bastian Pastewka sent the crime series Tomorrow I’ll Stop into the race for the best Breaking Bad clone. A year later, Netflix followed with Ozark.
The next series is now starting on the streaming service, the basic features of which have some similarities with the nerve-wracking career of Walter White: Mindful Murder. The film adaptation of the five-part novel series by Karsten Dusse transforms a lawyer and family man into a feared gangster who builds an empire between gang warfare and daycare problems.
In Mindful Morden, Tom Schilling follows in the footsteps of Walter White and Breaking Bad
Murder mindfully? At first glance, Björn Diemel (Tom Schilling) seems as if he could never harm a fly. As a lawyer, the most he does is defend people who have a corpse in their closet. And when it comes to mindfulness, well, Björn doesn’t have it that way either. He doesn’t find time for his wife Katharina (Emily Cox) or his daughter Emily (Pamuk Pilavci). His head is always at work.
You can watch the trailer for Mindful Murders here:
Mindful Morden – S01 Trailer (German) HD
Attending a mindfulness seminar is intended to help Björn create many small islands of time for the really important things in his life. But his most important client, mafia boss Dragan Sergowicz (Sascha Alexander Gersak), won’t let him rest. Because he’s really in trouble: Dragan committed a murder on the street, which was witnessed by an entire school bus and countless smartphones.
However, Björn doesn’t let himself be disturbed. As he learned in the mindfulness seminar, he focuses on one thing. The rest can wait and will be clarified with the same care at a later hour – even if that means that Björn has to become a murderer himself in order to get the really complicated problems out of the world. From then on he carefully cleans up the Berlin underworld.
Ideal Netflix binge: Tom Schilling’s rise to becoming a mindful mafia boss is very entertaining
The dynamic is very reminiscent of Breaking Bad and Co.: a breach of the law that is supposed to simplify things, brings to light three new annoyanceswhich can only be solved by further crimes. Because after murder number 1, not only the police but also various clan members and other mafia families are hot on Björn’s heels. One lie follows the next, so that Björn would have to lie on the floor crying.
But that’s exactly the highlight: thanks to his mindfulness methods, Björn is surprisingly good at making criminal plans. So good, in fact, that he tells the people who are actually involved in the shady dealings play easily can. He somehow finds a way out of every dead end, which makes the series very entertaining. The worst always happens and yet Björn keeps moving forward.
In Björn Diemel lies not only a capable Walter White, but also a Tom Hagen, the brilliant lawyer from the Godfather films, who keeps a cool head in every crisis situation and makes strategically efficient decisions. All of this is carried out by a minimally bored, extremely casual voice-overwhich also puts Björn Diemel in the direction of another iconic film character.
Not just Walter White: Tom Schilling tells Mindful Murders like Edward Norton Fight Club
When Schilling tells the story offscreen, he often sounds like Edward Norton in Fight Club. Once again there is a man who initially wanders through life somewhat disoriented and looks for meaning before he finds it in problematic leisure activities. It quickly becomes clear: we should treat this protagonist with much more skepticism than he does hypnotizing narrative voice allows.
Björn Diemel joins a long tradition of anti-heroes that have populated the series landscape since Tony Soprano. The big difference: Mindful Morden has not yet ventured there, where it really hurts. No matter how often Björn’s family acts as a story engine, in the end the series gets too caught up in its narrative gimmicks, specifically Björn’s rapid rise to becoming an unlikely mafia boss.
At some point, however, the sensationalism of whether he went a step too far this time and wasn’t careful enough runs out. What really captivates The Sopranos are these interpersonal abysseswhich reveal themselves beneath the clarified genre surface. The eight half-hour episodes of Mindful Morden have not yet reached this breaking point – they simply lack weight.
That’s the tricky thing about the premise: Mindful Morden thrives on its forward movement. Björn is the better gangster than all the other gangsters put together, even if some parties are slowly finding out about him. However, the brisk pace of the narrative follows the consequences of his actions very merciful in court. Although the height of the fall is theoretically huge, it doesn’t feel like it (yet).
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The complete first season of Mindful Morden has been available since then October 31, 2024 Available to stream on Netflix. This series review was written based on all eight episodes. It was not clear at the time of publication whether the remaining four parts of the original would be filmed in further seasons.