I see, to my surprise, that I never got around to reviewing the first two seasons of The Tunnel - the British/French take on the Swedish/Danish Bron/Broen, and the American The Bridge. Indeed, though I reviewed The Bridge, I thought it was not the best of the three. That accolade belongs to The Tunnel, though I have yet to see the last two seasons of Bron/Broen, so I conceivably could change that ranking.
Not likely, though, seeing as how good The Tunnel, especially its final season 3, is. I've admired Stephen Dillane's work since I saw him play Thomas Jefferson in the John Adams mini-series in 2008 (I thought it was longer ago than that). He plays Karl, the British and non-Asperger's detective. Clémence Poésy I don't recall having seen before - actually, she was in some Harry Potters and In Bruges, a movie my wife and I loved, and she does a fine job playing Elise in The Tunnel. In all three versions, the detective with all the advantages and disadvantages of Asperger's - the focus on logic and details, the lack of social sensitivities - is a woman.
Also in all three version, the team is sooner or later thrust into a severe moral dilemma - whether to save this person or that, when at least one of the likely victims is someone beloved to at least one of the detectives. This moral choice - whom to throw a rope to when two people, not near each other, are drowning - was given the best presentation, the epitome of this dilemma, I thought, in the final episode of The Tunnel.
I won't say anymore about that, in case you haven't seen it. I will say that all three versions require a strong stomach, meaning the villains they deal with are as perverse and ethically as ugly as these sort of monsters come. In fact, the going was so rough in season 3 of The Tunnel that I was close to deciding I didn't like it as much as the other versions and seasons. Until the ending.
So ... see this. It's human beings with souls fighting humans who've lost them, a story that typifies a lot of our age, and presented here at its searing best.
