Velvet Shadows
Noir in Prague after the Velvet Revolution
- 6episodes
- 2 h 49 minof drama
- 1992–2004setting years
Prague after the Velvet Revolution, from 1990 to 2005: old secrets, new money and a city that is still deciding what to remember. Antonín Zima, a consulting detective, and Pavel Hruška, a secondhand bookseller and former samizdat printer who tells each story, take the cases nobody else will.
The stories are loosely inspired by real cases. Every name, place and figure is changed and the solution is invented, so these are fictions, never reports of what happened.
The writing, voices, music, sound effects and artwork are AI-generated, and a human listens to and revises every episode. How it is made.
Episodes in Velvet Shadows
Three Thousand Metres Down
In Prague, four months after the freighter Kamenice was lost in the South Atlantic with six men aboard, a state insurer's claims assessor rings the detective Antonín Zima from a call box. Twelve crates of machinery, insured for a fortune, lie three thousand metres down, and someone above her wants the claim paid. What blew the Kamenice apart?
Last Day of October
On the last day of October the President's son walks down to the gate of a Prague villa: a shout, the railings ringing, a van door. By morning he is found on the steps of an Austrian police station, and the President's wife has come down the Castle steps alone to ask the detective Antonín Zima to bring him home. Who seized him?
Paper by Noon
At noon the Ministry froze Prague's Lion Fund, and by then its best shares had already left, on transfers that carry the chairman's signature. Professor Malina, the chairman whose face is on the fund's posters, writes to the detective Antonín Zima that he is accused of a theft he did not commit and has no one else to ask. Who got those shares out before the freeze?
A Call From Strahov
While the alarm rang in a Prague gallery, the only police car on duty was sent to an empty street at Strahov. By morning four paintings worth one point four billion crowns are gone, the night dispatcher is waiting to be blamed, and his captain has locked the caller's words in a drawer. Who was the voice on the radio?
Letters from Bavaria
Her daughter's letter home from Bavaria says everything is fine. So why is her mother sure that something is wrong?
The Case of Lipenská Street
On the evening an indicted godfather holds his Thursday coffee hour in Prague, a shot bursts his tall window and scatters glass over the cups. Who fired it?
More series
- Special Matters
- Sherlock Holmes — The New Cases
- Holmes NYC
- Holmes LA
- Vienna Files
- Moscow Rules
- Istanbul Confidential