Gasperlmaier doesn't have it easy: A mysterious phone call leads him to Loser, where the bodies of two women become his latest murder case. While Gasperlmaier battles his fear of heights and his weak stomach, he and Dr. Weiss from the Liezen District Police Command face ever more controversial questions.

Major Kottan was actually born in the depths of the 1970s in a folk play by Helmut Zenker for the Vienna Volkstheater. More than 30 years after the film script was written, the Rabenhof version of the first Kottan TV episode, "Hartlgasse 16a," demonstrates the story's timeless validity. The stage version of this "milestone in television history," whose resonance is still felt in the German-speaking television landscape today, takes place here and now in the Rabenhof municipal building. The revival of the folk play genre is one approach to this venture; another explores the question of whether Helmut Zenker is not a direct artistic descendant of Ödön von Horvath.