Apple TV+ Lands Oscar Winner for 1920s Germany Book Adaptation
Colin Firth boards Apple TV’s high-profile adaptation of the bestselling 1920s-set series, stepping into a pivotal role as a fledgling Berlin detective navigates a city on the brink of political upheaval.
Apple TV+ is quietly building a Berlin-set crime epic with some serious pedigree, and now it just added an Oscar winner. Colin Firth has signed on to star opposite Jack Lowden in the new series based on Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther novels. If you like smoky clubs, political powder kegs, and detectives who do not play nice, this one is for you.
Colin Firth joins the case
Firth is playing Paul Lohser, a brilliant, thorny veteran on Berlin's Murder Squad who gets paired with Lowden's Bernie Gunther. He is not the warm-and-fuzzy mentor type, which is half the fun; he becomes an unlikely guide as Bernie learns how to survive a job that is already bending under the city's rising tensions.
The show starts with Kerr's 1928-set novel Metropolis, tracking Bernie's early days as a newly promoted officer chasing a series of murders targeting people on the margins. The production is rolling cameras in Berlin right now.
'Fighting for truth, whatever the cost.'
'Unprecedented freedom and dizzying turbulence.'
The team behind it
- Adapted by Peter Straughan (Oscar winner), directed by Tom Shankland (BAFTA nominee)
- Produced by Bad Wolf and PlayTone, the company founded by Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman
- Executive producers: Jane Tranter, Dan McCulloch, Ryan Rasmussen (for Bad Wolf); Straughan and Shankland; Hanks and Goetzman (for PlayTone)
- Consulting producer: Jane Thynne, widow of Philip Kerr, via Thynker Ltd.
- Filming location: Berlin
There is a nice reunion baked in: Firth and Straughan previously worked together on the 2011 film Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and this scratches a similar itch in a different key.
Where Jack Lowden fits
Apple tapped Lowden as the lead back in July 2025. You probably know him as River Cartwright from Slow Horses. He is now headlining this series, which a lot of folks are positioning as the natural next stop for that audience. Slow Horses, for the record, is already renewed through Season 7.
What else Firth has coming up
On top of this, Firth shows up next in Prime Video's Young Sherlock, premiering March 4. He is also starring in Steven Spielberg's Disclosure Day and returning as Harry Hart in Matthew Vaughn's Kingsman: The Blue Bloods. Representation-wise, he is with Independent Talent and CAA.