The TV section of the German fest will include screenings of David E. Kelley's 'Mr. Mercedes,' Canadian crime series 'Caught' and Australian drama 'Mystery Road.'


Perfume, the new German thriller series from Netflix and Germany's Constantin Film, will have its world premiere at this year's Munich Film Festival, debuting in Munich's TV series sidebar.


The series, inspired by Patrick Suskind's best-seller Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, and the 2006 film of the same name, follows a group of ambitious students who experiment with the power of scent to bend people to their will, with deadly results. Perfume features a who's who of young German talent, including August Diehl, Friederike Becht, Wotan Wilke Mohring, Ken Duken, Trystan Putter, Marc Hosemann and Juergen Maurer.


German public broadcaster ZDF Neo is co-producing with Constantin and Netflix and will have first-window rights to the series in Germany, with Netflix taking worldwide rights outside German-speaking Europe, as well as second-window rights for its German-language service. The series is directed by Philipp Kadelbach (Generation War, SS-GB).


Other highlights of this year's Munich TV lineup include David E. Kelley's Stephen King adaptation Mr. Mercedes, starring Brady Hartsfield and Brendan Gleeson as, respectively, a psychotic killer who drives a stolen Mercedes into a crowd and the retired cop who vows to catch him; the Canadian miniseries Caught, based on the novel by Lisa Moore, which stars Allan Hawco as a drug dealer on the run from the police; and acclaimed Australian crime drama Mystery Road.


Other German series premiering in Munich this year include The Stenographer, a crime drama from ZDF starring Iris Berben as a police stenographer who decides to investigate her daughter's murder; the family drama Labaule & Erben from public broadcaster SWR; and Servus Baby, a comedy about a 30-something woman in Munich struggling to balance the demands of love, career and (potential) family life.


The 36th Munich Film Festival runs June 28-July 7. The festival will announce its complete program June 11.