The Long-Awaited Return of BABYLON BERLIN

"The world is getting crazier and crazier."

There I was on Monday, catching up on my RSS feed when, all of a sudden, to my pleasant surprise, I scrolled upon a New York Times review of BABYLON BERLIN season four, which has taken eons (four years) to be released in the United States. “Dancing While the World Begins to Burn,” proclaimed the Times headline. Subhead: “The long-awaited fourth season of the cult-favorite German thriller takes place in 1931, with the Nazis not quite in power.” EXCITEMENT! Then I got to the third paragraph and the phrase, “…is finally premiering on MHz Choice in the United States on Tuesday.” Which, wait, this isn’t on Netflix anymore? And the eff is an MHz Choice? (“A boutique streamer of international series and films,” apparently.) And does this mean I’m gonna have to subscribe to yet another streaming service? For $7.99 a month? With a seven-day free trial and the full season online by July 30? The answer, obviously, is yes.

I really love this show (not least of all for the Bryan Ferry cameo in season two). I can’t for the life of me remember off the top of my head what happened in the previous season, which aired so long ago that almost an entire U.S presidential term and a historic global pandemic transpired in the interim. But in addition to its review the Times has one of those “Here’s What You Need to Know” posts recapping “where we left things at the end of Season 3, and what to look out for in the new episodes” (because the Times publishes stuff like that now). “The story of Babylon Berlin throughout the show, I think, is how the world is getting crazier and crazier,” leading man Volker Bruch tells The Hollywood Reporter. “That’s what happens between the third and fourth seasons.” That’s also basically what’s happening in the world right now! In other BABYLON news: “The fifth and final season of the global hit series … has received an official green light, and eight new episodes will be shot this fall.” 👀

Following up on my interview with Dean Jobb earlier this week: A GENTLEMAN AND A THIEF got a rave in The New York Times Book Review (“delectably entertaining”) from Darrell Hartman (whose book I reviewed for the Times last year—small world). Dean also has a juicy excerpt for CrimeReads: “The Jewel Thief and the Prince of Wales.” Elsewhere in the Times: “How a 1933 Book About Jews in Magic Was Rescued From Oblivion; Richard Hatch gave up a career as a physicist to become a magician — and a one-man historical preservation society dedicated to a German author killed in the Holocaust.”

In Air Mail, BROADWAY BUTTERFLY author Anthony M. DeStefano writes about his search for the grave of Jazz Age “lady gangster” Vivian Gordon: “She was a notorious murder victim in New York City history whose death contributed to political upheaval. I thought she deserved something tangible to show that she had lived and died.” Over at Smithsonian: “Why the 1924 Democratic National Convention Was the Longest and Most Chaotic of Its Kind in U.S. History.” And JSTOR Daily brings us the tale of “The Love Letter Generator That Foretold ChatGPT,” in which two British computer scientists “essentially invented AI writing” during the 1950s.

That’s all for now, but I’ll be back in your inbox Tuesday with a roundup of books hitting shelves in July. Until then…