Despite being based on the crime novels by Appie Baantjer, the show never adapted one of the novels. To date, the only direct film or series adaptation of a Baantjer novel is the feature film Moord in Extase (1984).
During development, Herman van der Zwan, then head of John de Mol Produkties, asked his acquaintance Toots Thielemans if he would be interested in performing the title theme to Baantjer (1995). The famous Belgian mouth organ player came up with a theme he called "A Lonely Detective in Rotterdam". But since the series takes place in Amsterdam and the lead detective is happily married, Van der Zwan had to give Thielemans a few more pointers. Eventually the theme became known as "Circle of Smiles".
During filming of season 5 (1999), actor Freek van Muiswinkel (watchman Jochems) had to drop out due to illness (pancreatic cancer, which later led to his death). Panicked, the producers phoned Jeroen van Koningsbrugge, who had guest-starred as Jochems's assistant earlier in the season, asking him to play a replacement watchmen for the remainder of the season. A similar thing happened during filming of the 6th season (2000)- actor Hans Karsenbarg had to be admitted to the hospital. His friend Hans Veerman took over his role for the rest of the season.
In later seasons, the amount of episodes was reduced for budgetary reasons and Piet Römer's advanced age. Seasons 1-5 had 13 episodes each. Starting with season 6, the amount was reduced to 10. In 2003, 13 episodes were shot for the 9th season. However, four of these were delayed and were eventually aired in the 10th season (2004), resulting in season 9 being the shortest season yet with 9 episodes. Eight episodes were shot for this season, giving a total of twelve episodes. However, four were delayed again, resulting in only 8 episodes. Two of these were pushed to the 11th season (2005), along with four new episodes to give a total of 6 - a record low. The other two, the two-parter ''De Cock en de afrekening'' were filmed in 2004 for season 10, but not aired until season 12 started in 2006. 6 new episodes were shot for season 12, giving 8 in total making it the only season with more episodes than its predecessor as opposed to less.
The scenes at Lowietje's café (each episode had at least one scene there) were all shot simultaneously. This took only a few days in total.
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