[Smoking in the crime drama series "Tatort", 2019-2025]

Smoking scenes in films can be understood as cues that trigger a strong desire to smoke in smokers, make it more difficult to quit smoking, and contribute to the normalization of tobacco consumption. With an average of 8 million viewers, the crime series "Tatort" is one of the most popular and widely watched German television productions. The study examined how many episodes of "Tatort" featured smoking and whether there had been any changes over the period from 2019 to 2025.

The sample comprised the entire population of all 204 episodes of the crime series "Tatort" from the 2019/2020 to 2024/2025 seasons. All episodes were analyzed in terms of content using the categories "smoke-free" and "not smoke-free."

Smoking occurred in 152 of the 204 "Tatort" episodes (74.5%). The range varied from 70% (season 2023/24) to 82% (season 2020/21). This variation is statistically insignificant (χ²(5)= 1.83; p=0.87). The highest proportion of episodes with smoking scenes were those featuring the investigative teams from Bremen, Wiesbaden, and Mainz, where smoking occurred in every episode broadcast. The only episode with no smoking at all was "Tatort" Luzern, which, however, also had the lowest production rate with only one episode.

Smoking was depicted in three-quarters of the "Tatort" episodes. No temporal trends were observed over the six-year observation period. For years, the number of serious attempts to quit smoking has been declining in Germany. Popular films such as the crime series "Tatort", in which smoking is frequent, are unlikely to mitigate this trend.