Picture: Sky Deutschland
The German neo-noir TV series Babylon Berlin will soon be making an untimely departure from Netflix in the United States, Canada, and Australia.
Set in Berlin during the late 1920s and loosely based on novels by Volker Kutscher, the show follows a police inspector from Cologne who is on assignment looking to dismantle an extortion ring. The show first aired on Sky 1 in Germany back in 2017.
Babylon Berlin was created by Tom Tykwer, Achim von Borries, and Henk Handloegten, with Volker Bruch, Liv Lisa Fries, Peter Kurth, and Matthias Brandt starring.
The show was only ever available on three regions of Netflix: the US, CA, and AU. In these countries, the show is marketed as an original Netflix title. The show first dropped on Netflix in these countries on January 30th, 2018, with seasons 2 and 3 added in February 2019 and March 2020, respectively.
Sadly, a fourth season, which aired on Sky in Germany back in 2022, never materialized on Netflix, and now we’ve found out that not only will Netflix not be picking up the fourth season, but the show will now be departing. That’s additionally bad since a fifth season was recently announced to be in development.
Usually, with licensing, Netflix manages to pick up the rights for shows for the lifetime of a show that they’re streaming, although it became clear in recent years that would not be the case with Babylon Berlin. We reached out to Netflix on several occasions and various companies involved in the production but we never got a concrete answer on what happened.
When will Babylon Berlin leave Netflix?
We can confirm that all three seasons of the show will be departing Netflix in the three countries it resides in February 2024.
Your last day to watch Babylon Berlin on Netflix will be February 28th, 2024, with the actual removal date planned for February 29th (yes, it’s a leap year!).
Following its removal, it’s currently unclear where the series will be streaming next if it finds a new streaming home at all.
For more on what’s leaving Netflix in February 2024, keep it locked here on What’s on Netflix.
Are you disappointed that Babylon Berlin is departing Netflix? Are you also disappointed that season 4 won’t be joining Netflix? Let us know in the comments.
Netflix Synopsis: "A Soviet freight train's hijacking leads a haunted cop and a poor typist to uncover a political conspiracy amid the vice and glamour of 1929 Berlin."
