Is The Black Forest Murders on BBC Four based on a true story?

As per the synopsis: "A young woman is missing. After an intensive search, her body is found, bludgeoned to death by an unknown assailant.

"Senior Detective Barbara Kramer (Nina Kunzendorf) of the Lauburg police and her team, including Thomas Riedle (Tilman Strauß), begin the search for the perpetrator. They speak with witnesses and gather evidence but quick successes elude them.

"The team grows into a large special investigation unit, securing hundreds of clues and attempting to connect them. In addition, they must deal with a second murder, unclear whether it is connected to the first, and parallels to a similar case in Austria that occurred four years earlier are emerging.

"Under the watchful eye of the concerned public, the police officers face mounting pressure for months, until their persistence is finally rewarded."

But is The Black Forest Murders based on a true story? Read on to find out.

Is The Black Forest Murders on BBC Four based on a true story?

Yes and no – while the drama is a work of fiction and dramatised scenes, it is inspired by two real-life cases that occurred in 2016 in southern Baden, Germany.

The four-parter is based on the non-fiction book SOKO Erle, written by Walter Roth, which digs into the investigative and forensic sides of the case.

Series writers Robert Hummel and Martina Mouchot have stated that they were fascinated with the way that Roth's book dealt with the work at the centre of the murder cases of three young women.

Speaking about the The Black Forest Murders, Hummel wrote on his website: "Four years ago, I read about these crimes and the investigations in Walther Roth's non-fiction book SOKO Erle and found the events so moving and the work of the police and forensic scientists so admirable that I thought: 'This has to be made into a film.'"

Also speaking about the book and how it inspired the series, Mouchot said (via SBS): "In this remarkable book, Roth describes in detail the meticulous and ultimately successful search for the murderers of three young women from his perspective as a police press spokesman."

"We were fascinated by how persistently and how much time and effort the police put into their investigation: every lead was followed, national borders were crossed, and numerous overtime hours were put in to solve the crimes," the pair say in a joint statement about the series.

Mouchot continued: "We were very quickly able to impress the experienced producer Nils Dünker, who worked with us to formulate the narrative in a committed and competent manner: We wanted to fictionalise the crimes in a classic way, but portray the police work in a detailed and realistic way.

"This means that we traced the investigations, but invented our investigators and their backgrounds. We also invented the locations. We also changed the order of the murder cases and alienated the victims and families.

"We did not want to exploit the suffering of the victims and their families in the media, nor did we want to give the perpetrators too much attention, out of respect for the environment and to protect the dignity of the people involved.

"In the points where we were concerned with adapting and changing the material, we turned to a case analyst, a professor of forensic medicine and research contacts with a criminalistic background with our questions in order to do justice to the claim of realism beyond the literary original."

The Black Forest Murders premieres on BBC Four on Sunday 31st May at 9pm, with all episodes available to stream from that day on iPlayer.

Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.