'Babylon Berlin' Takes Top Honors at German TV Awards

Tom Tykwer's period thriller, which Netflix will bow in the U.S., picked up four awards, including for best drama, at Germany's equivalent to the Emmys.

Tom Tykwer's wildly ambitious and critically acclaimed period drama Babylon Berlin was the big winner of this year's German TV Awards, the local equivalent of the Emmys, winning four prizes, including the top honor for best drama series.

Babylon Berlin, a crime drama set in Berlin in 1929, also snapped up honors for best cinematography, best music and best set design. A co-production of German public broadcaster ARD and pay TV network Sky, the series has been snapped up by Netflix for the U.S. and will bow there later this month.

Sky premiered the first two seasons of Babylon Berlin late last year, and ARD will air them on German free TV this fall. The networks have already commissioned a third season.

Close behind Babylon Berlin was the German gangster series 4 Blocks, produced by pay TV network TNT. The drama about a Lebanese crime family in Berlin's Neukolln district picked up three awards, including a best acting honor for Kida Khodr Ramadan, who plays the fiercely intelligent mafia boss Ali Hamady. “My father would be proud of me,” a tearful Ramadan said as he accepted his award.

The best actress honor went to Julia Jentsch (Sophie Scholl: The Final Days) for her performance in The Disappearance. Series director Hans-Christian Schmid also nabbed the best screenplay honor for the show, which follows a single mother's desperate search for her vanished daughter.