Fatal Crossing: Anatomy of a Serial Killer

[Big Spoilers ahead ... ]

I've heard -- in television shows and movies about serial killers, I've never done any research into them myself -- that female serial killers are very rare.  Fatal Crossing, the latest Nordic Noir TV series from Kristine Berg and Arne Berggren, does a masterful job of portraying one, and how she came to be.

The villain, Lisbeth/Jyte, tells her interrogator, the journalist Nora Sand, that she's not afraid of being abandoned, she's afraid of being forgotten.  That's as an astute a statement of the obsession with fame that I've come across.  As part of Lisbeth's quest for fame, she likes to be quoted.  I hope this fictional character appreciates that I've at least paraphrased her.

Fortunately, most people who value fame and enjoy a bit of it, including me, don't achieve it and seek to maintain it by killing people.  Lisbeth discovers how much killing attractive young women really appeals to her when she and her best friend Lulu are kidnapped by a man with a taste for harming young women himself, and Lisbeth turns the tables on him, not killing him, but running him and Lulu in support of satisfying her own deadly needs.

We follow the path to discovering this depraved menage a trois via the central character, Nora Sand, an intrepid journalist with her own backpack of emotional baggage.  She's played in compelling detail by Marie Sandø Jondal, whom I've never seen before on the screen.  Indeed, I've never seen a searcher for serial killers portrayed with quite the range of emotional valence Sand brings to the part.

Berg and Bergson deserve a lot of credit for this, as does Lone Theils, herself a Danish journalist and author of the novel of the same name from which this TV series was adapted.  Fatal Crossing is itself the first in a series of novels, and I very much look forward to seeing more of this Nordic Noir with a twist from this team.

See also my reviews of these other Berg and Berggren TV series:  Catch and Release and Outlier

And my 2022 interview with Berg and Berggren:

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Catch and Release 1.1: Nordic Noir in the Twilight of Life

 

I just saw the first episode of Catch and Release, a new Norwegian Nordic noir series by Kristine Berg and Arne Berggren, the team who made Outlier, which I saw on Acorn via Prime Video and very much liked and reviewed here this past August.   Catch and Release is currently airing in Norway, and should be up on Acorn in 2022.  I'll definitely watch and review the rest of the series as soon as that happens.

Like Outlier, it's a very different kind of suspense thriller.  The protagonist is an elderly former police woman, Irja Lantto, who has left the force because she has only weeks or a month of so left to live.  In fact, she's putting a gun to head, to end her life right there and then, when she hears the sirens of a police car.  They're on the way to investigate the murder of a man who was fishing in the clear waters of Norway.

Of course, the current police would rather Irja go home and rest (i.e., die) rather than be troubled by her investigating the murder, but she'll have none of that.  And in this first episode, we see there is plenty to investigate, including people with all kinds of problems in all kinds of situations.   Near the end, we also learn that there's a man who lives deep in the woods, who tells Irja that there's some kind of inchoate evil afoot.

The last TV series about an elderly investigator that I recall was Barnaby Jones, in which Buddy Ebsen played Barnaby from 1973-1980 on CBS.  That show was one of the pillars of my "defective detective" theory of television back then, in which I noticed that just about every detective on television had some kind of physical problem:  Barnaby was old, Longstreet was blind, Ironside was in a wheelchair, etc.  The hero (or anti-hero, still a little early to tell) of Catch and Release would fit right in with that group, and in fact Irja will likely give a more profound accounting of herself.

I'll be back here with a review of rest, as soon as I see it.

See also Catch and Release 1.2-1.8:  Not about Fish, and Much More than You Think

Katla: Nordic Noir Science Fantasy

My wife and I binged all eight episodes of Katla, which debuted on Netflix just a few days ago.  It's Icelandic, and billed as mystery, drama, and science fiction.  I'd say it's definitely Nordic Noir -- which takes care of mystery and drama -- but more science fantasy than science fiction, in case that matters to you.

It takes place in Vik, a real "remote seafront village in south Iceland" (according to Google), which "sits in the shadow" (also from Google) of the nearby volcano Katla (also real).  What's not real, and here is where the story begins, is that after an eruption, deceased residents start coming back to life.  These include Ása (who disappeared a year ago, sister of protagonist Grima) and Mikael (who was killed three years ago, eight-year-old son of volcanist Darri).  Pretty soon, people begin appearing not when their dopplegangers are dead, but just when they have a terminal illness, or are out of town, say, in Sweden.

It's pretty clear from the outset that the volcanic eruption is in some way responsible for this.  But how?  We learn, in an episode near the end, that a meteor from another solar system landed in the volcano a millennium or so ago.  So now I'm thinking we've got a late and lamented Debris kind of effect going on here.  But that's never really spelled out, either.

In the end, Grima and Darri come to realize that the dopplegangers came forth to help the relatives in Vik repair their lives and their relationships.  Mikael, though he's psychotic, helps Darri and his wife get back together.  Grima gets not only her sister back for a while, but another version of herself, and this helps her repair her relationship with her husband.  But how?  We're given no clue about this, and that's why I say Katla is more correctly characterized as science fantasy than science fiction.

But that's ok.  It's the relationships among the affected people, not the science, that is of most interest in this compelling drama, and I'm definitely onboard for seeing another season.

Darkness: Those Who Kill: Brutally and Rivetingly

It's been too long since I reviewed a Nordic Noir series -- Wisting on September 15 -- so I thought I'd jump back with a vengeance and tell you about the Danish Darkness: Those Who Kill, which my wife and I binge watched on Acorn via Amazon Prime Video the past few nights.

Vengeance is a good word for Darkness.  So would brutal, harrowing, and riveting.   A squad of ok not brilliant detectives in Copenhagen, assisted by a profiler who is sharp enough but also has some demons in her background, struggle to apprehend a serial kidnapper/killer.   Who turns out to be not one but a serial kidnapper/killer partnership.   

Take that literally.  One is a kidnapper who keeps his young blonde female victims in chains in his cellar and his sex with them because he loves to the control them.   He also has sex with his partner, a woman, who gets off on killing the kidnapped victims.   The kidnappings and the sex are shown in brutal detail, in which the victims are usually subdued in a flurry of punches.

[Spoilers ahead.]

There's in-depth development of the killer's story, who was raped as a young teenager by her even younger brother, after leading him on.   Being a woman, she's just not suspected as being part of this murderous spree, and in fact being the one who drives it and directs the kidnapper.   It understandably take the police and the profiler a long time to catch on to what's going on.

There's edge-of-the-seat action in every episode, along with the punching and the degradation of the victims.   Well worth watching, but not by the faint of heart or the weak of stomach.   Good writing and creation by Ina Bruhn, good directing by Carsten Myllerup, with persuasive acting by Natalie Madueño as the profiler and Signe Egholm Olsen as the killer.

 

Wisting: Nordic Noir at its Best

When they came up with the name Nordic Noir -- whoever that they was -- they surely had something like Wisting in mind.   Not only does it take place in Norway and feature a seasoned detective and his team hunting not just one but at least two serial killers of beautiful blonde women, but in its single-ten-episode season it manages to weave together two quite separate though connected murder stories, and tell us compelling backstories for at least half a dozen diverse characters.

Many of the characters are of course police.  William Wisting, whose name the series takes, is head of a unit with Nils (a detective Wisting's age who has almost nothing but contempt for the FBI pair who come to assist Wisting in the first half of the season, because the serial killer is likely a transplanted American), a younger male detective earnest but unseasoned, a woman who has to juggle in-vitro fertilization with her work on a breaking murder case, and like that.  Carrie Anne-Moss (The Matrix) plays one half of the FBI team, and I didn't know the rest of the actors, but they are were superb.

The biggest personal story that runs through the season is the relationship between Wisting (a recent widower) and his daughter Line, an investigative reporter with penchant for crime stories, blonde, and you just know she's in danger from at least one of the serial killers, which in fact she is.  She's played by Thea Green Lundberg whom, come to think of it, I did see in another fine Norwegian series, Occupied (with a memorable Dylanesque opening song), and she was excellent in both.  And as long as I'm giving kudos to the actors, let me mention Mads Ousdal as Nils, who almost could be a Norwegian Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Sven Nordin, who does a perfect job as Wistng.

In addition to all that, the scenery is a sight for pandemic-sore eyes.  Characters have homes on, over, or near the water, and the roads and the forestry are lush.  Hey, I'm not a detective, but the environment was so inviting I was tempted to jump through the screen and see if I could be of any help.

I'll have to settle having seen a captivating season, and looking forward to a season two.

 

Marcella 3: Nordic Noir on a Whole New Split Level

The third season of Marcella just started streaming a few days ago on Netflix.  It's more tightly plotted than the first two seasons, at times as intricate as the Godfather trilogy, and I'd say the best Marcella so far.

Most of the time, Marcella isn't Marcella.  She's Keira, and she's embedded herself with a potent mob family in Belfast.  But embedded isn't quite the right word, because Marcella has actually become Keira.  She believes herself more than pretends to be Keira.  This fits in well with the tenuous grip Marcella has on sanity in her prior two seasons on television.

The mob family she's now part of, to the point of eventually almost running, is a nice piece of narrative work.  The matriarch is still the boss, but she's getting competition from both of her sons.  Finn's the more usually violent and prone to think he's really running the family.  Keira's pretty comfortably and literally in bed with him.  Rory has the brains, is a bit of a nutcase, and wouldn't mind Keira in his bed, either.  Keira may well be open to that, too.

Meanwhile, Marcella's handler thinks he can keep Marcella/Keira on the razor's edge of being thoroughly a part of the mobster family but ultimately still undercover police, too.   There have been a fair number of cop shows over the years in which a deep undercover agent struggles to hold on to her or his real identity.  But none were quite as powerful as Marcella/Keira in this third season of the show.

The plot turns are jolting, i.e. great to see, and the ending is one of the best I've seen of any police series, period.  Anna Friel is better than ever in the title role, which is to say punch-in-the-gut compelling in every emotional twist and turn her complex double-identity requires.  I haven't seen most of the other actors before, but they were excellent, too.  Marcella 3 is an all together superb, eminently bingeable season, and lifts Hans Rosenfeldt's British Nordic Noir to a whole new split level.

Deadwind: Live-Wire Whodunnit

I thought I'd start off 2019 with a review of a new Nordic Noir series on Netflix - something I haven't done in a while.  (We binged a lot of it last night, because New Year's Eve on CNN without Kathy Griffin was not worth watching.)  Deadwind (originally Karppi) is an excellent Finnish whodunit.  Although my wife and I both had a bad feeling about the killer at the very beginning, his/her identity was kept beyond logical deduction until the 12th and last episode.  That's a good thing in a mystery.

The central characters are Sophia Karppi, a seasoned homicide detective just back to work after the death of her husband (by accident, he was hit by a car when he was jogging) and Sakari Nurmi, a detective from "financial" investigations, on his first homicide case.  The victim is a former swimmer, now working for a big company trying to get approval for a new kind of energy-saving wind plant, who has been having an affair with the lead scientist/boss of the company.  There are suspects galore, ranging from the victim's husband to the boss to the head of a rival company for which she (the victim) was working as a spy.

The action is fast and the emotional involvements deep.  I don't speak Finnish, but the captioned translation was ok (the word "bullshit," though, appeared in almost every scene), and the meaning clear.   The murder took place in October, and the narrative unfolds over the ensuing months, making the snow that was always on the ground plausible (I don't know, is there always snow on the ground in Finland?)  Despite the murder and other bad doing afoot, Helsinki looks like a good place to visit.

The acting for the two lead characters - Pihla Viitala as Sophia and Lauri Tilkanen as Sakari - was effective, and I'd definitely be interested in seeing more of their exploits (ok, that tells you they both survived, but it's impossible to have no spoilers at all in a review).  Rike Jokela directed and is listed on IMDb as the first writer,  so hats off to him - though maybe not on a windy day in winter in Helsinki.  I understand there's a new season being written - count my wife and me in as viewers.

 

Neanderthal noir

Marcella II: Noir, with a Vengeance

Marcella - billed as Nordic Noir in English - is back with a vengeance in its second season on Netflix.  Which is to say, it is at least twice as dark, brutal, and violent as its first noir-season, which I reviewed here last year.

The denouement of the non-Marcella story - that is, the murders which she and her team are investigating, which don't personally involve Marcella - was sufficiently harrowing.  And it actually did personally involve Marcella at the end, since her son came razor close - or actually via something other than a razor - to becoming a victim.  The villain - a woman traumatized by the death of a friend when they were younger, to lobotomize kids to make sure they don't do horrible things when they grow up - was somewhat familiar (not the character but that kind of motivation), or something we've seen the likes of on shows like Criminal Minds.  But the way our narrative gets there, with all kinds of twists and turns and unexpected deaths and lives ruined, was fresh and shocking.

The Marcella story - that is, the story of why she is having her blackouts - was barely developed until the non-Marcella story was resolved, but once it became center stage, in the last episode, its progress and resolution was about as grim as it gets.  Marcella under hypnosis remembers that she was responsible for the death of her baby, which she shook too hard in an effort to quiet the baby.  At least, that's what Marcella remembers - or thinks she remembers - but it wasn't 100% clear on the screen that Marcella's shaking of her baby actually killed her.

The immediate aftermath of this revelation was sheer adrenalin.  Marcella draws on a technique we saw in first season - DNA swapping (we saw several themes from the first season well woven into the second) - to fake her death, and join some other branch of British law enforcement.  This leaves more than enough room for a third season - which would be welcome to see, if only because Marcella would able to work without her black-outs.

Tour-de-force acting by Anna Friel in the title role, and memorable acting by just about everyone on screen.  Count on me being back here a review of the third season next year, or whenever it's aired.

See also Marcella (I): Offbeat and Compelling

Loch Ness: The Monster is Human

Checking in with a review of Loch Ness (aka The Loch), a mini-series of six episodes streaming on Acorn. I guess you could call it Northern Noir, because it does take place around Loch Ness, near Inverness in Scotland, and that's pretty far north.  It's certainly noir.  And it's good indeed.

Loch Ness of course is known for its monster, which is probably not real, though you never know for sure, especially long ago.  And the story starts off with something in the lake - a body, a human body, tied down to the bottom, with his heart ripped out, so we know that there's clearly a two-legged human monster afoot here.

There are lots of plausible suspects, which make for a taut and appealing whodunnit.   The police are flawed, from the local myopic guy in charge to the forensic psychologist brought in, but they're lifted by Annie (also a local, well played by Laura Fraser, who was also excellent in The Missing) on her first murder case, and DCI Quigley (Siobhan Finneran, who played the more reserved by equally powerful O'Brien on Downton Abby).

As is always the case with these Northern Noirs, Nordic and otherwise, there's a lot of pathology in this small town, afflicting people of all ages.  The puzzle to solve is which one led to the murders - because the body in the lake is soon joined by others, out and about on land.

The ending was both well hidden and in retrospect completely plausible, which means it's a satisfying end, which in addition to the locale and the vivid characters makes Loch Ness well worth your viewing and eminently eligible for a second season.

a different kind of murderer

Bordertown: Nordic Noir in Finland

We slaked our thirst for Nordic Noir with an excellent new series from Finland, in Finnish, on Netflix: Bordertown (Finnish title Sorjonen).  It's unique, a little strange in a good way, and definitely worth watching if you're at all a fan of this genre, which my wife and I are.

First of all, I've long had an interest in Finnish, ever since I started writing science fiction stories with a Basque connection - an early story, "Last Things First,"  and my Locus-Award winning novel, The Silk Code.  Finnish is a Uralic language, meaning it has more in common with Hungarian than other Scandinavian languages.  Basque is not actually a Uralic, but has some similarity to the Uralic tongues in the way it creates lengthy word-versions rather than sentences made of shorter words, and, who knows, maybe Basque is in some way related to Finnish and Hungarian after all (but I don't want to get too science fictional here).

But it's fun to hear Finnish spoken, and the subtitles provide more than enough explanation of the story.  In the case of Bordertown, it's actually four distinct though interrelated cases which Kari Sorjonen (very well played by Ville Virtanen) is either called upon to investigate or he can't help investigate because a member of his family is either a victim, suspect, or both.

Sorjonen is an unusual and memorable kind of detective.  He has a brilliantly deductive mind - almost Holmesian - but his emotions are never too far from the surface.  His wife and teenage daughter are commanding characters, as is Lena (strong acting by Anu Sinisalo), his partner, who comes to Finland by way of St. Petersburg.  Indeed, the stories are sometimes as much about Russia as Finland, because most the action takes place in Lappeenranta (the Bordertown), close to the Russian border. Sorjonen has come to Lappeenranta from bustling Helsinki to find a bit of peace for him and his family, which of course he doesn't.

There's plenty of sex, perversion, and dark crime in these stories as befits a gritty Nordic Noir series. Highly recommended, especially in the summer, when the snow and ice of Finland look refreshing on the screen, whatever the seething criminality being enacted upon it.

Neanderthal Noir

No Second Chance: First Place Whodunnit

I'm continuing to feast on the international television and movies Netflix has been bringing us, ranging from Nordic Noir (Dicte and many more) to Cuban cop (Four Seasons in Havana) to Israeli undercover (Fauda).   France is well represented in this, too, with the superb Spiral, which I'll review after I've seen the 5th season on Netflix for free (cheapskate that I am), and Marseilles, which was quite good.

No Second Chance is another French winner, which arrived in France via New Jersey, where Harlan Coben, the American renowned mystery writer, lives and works.   Coben not only wrote No Second Chance, but has a nice cameo at the end, along with Dana Delaney, the only actor American audiences will recognize in this series.

The rest are French, and all excellent.  So is the narrative, which unlike a lot of high-octane kidnap stories, comes packaged with a first-class, whodunnit puzzler.  A father is shot to death, a mother shot and left for dead, and their six-month baby is kidnapped.   The mother, a medical doctor, recovers and sets out to find her baby.

But that won't happen until she or someone else solves the puzzle of what happened in the first place. Suffice to say it's not what it seems to be, as the main detective is just on edge of realizing.   There's a gap of time in the narrative - which was somewhat necessary for one of the crucial developments in the ending - but I think the story would have been even stronger and tighter without it.

But that's a small quibble about a compelling six-episode series,  crème de la crème for international and indeed all television.


silk noir

Four Seasons in Havana: Five Stars

As the new year gets underway, Netflix continues to revolutionize television in many ways, one of the most important being the way it makes available to American viewers (and viewers around the world) television series from other countries and cultures.  In the past months, I've reviewed outstanding examples from Israel (Fauda), France (Marseilles), and Nordic Noir narratives from Denmark and Iceland.   The stories are not only riveting, but when you watch them subtitled (not dubbed) in their original language, you get a chance to increase your international vocabulary over what you learned in high school and college when you weren't paying that much attention.

So I had high expectations when I started watching Four Seasons in Havana - four 90-minute detective stories, rendered in Spanish, made in Cuba and Spain, following the exploits of Lt. Conde - and they were not only met but exceeded. Conde (well played by Cuban actor Jorge Perugorría) is a philosophically minded, hard-bitten but full of heart, existential mid-level detective, wise-cracking one minute, challenging Cuban authority the next, doggedly pursuing the murderer, and always with an eye for a beautiful woman.  He usually succeeds in both quests, but not usually in a way that brings him any lasting satisfaction.

We've seen hard-boiled detectives like Conde - actually, I'd say he was medium-boiled - many times before, but what makes Four Season in Havana different and memorable is that it takes place in Havana.  As is well known, a lot of the culture of Cuba was frozen in the late 1950s, with American cars from that era carefully maintained for decades.  One of the best things Barack Obama did as President was finally lift the American embargo on Cuba, so that snapshot in time is likely to catch up to the present pretty quickly.  This means that Four Seasons in Havana gives us a fascinating glimpse of a Cuba that may soon be gone - and with it, not only antique cars, but old telephones, big desktop computers, more radio than television, and a love of music (such as Creedence Clearwater Revival) that, while still admired in America, has long been old hat.

So in addition to the crime stories being appealing in their own right, we get in Four Seasons in Havana the dividend of the next best thing to an actual visit to Havana, which I now hope more than ever to do myself one day.   Whether you feel that way or not, see the series.


silk noir

My List of the Top 10 Television Series of 2016

Continuing the tradition - just started last year - here is my Top 10 list for 2016,  from who knows how many series I've seen this past year on network television, cable, and streaming (Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Acorn):

Honorable mention (narrowly not making the list, for a variety of reasons):  On the list last year: Rectify concluded its run this Fall, and although it was still excellent and unique in many ways, some of the episodes lacked the intensity of the earlier seasons.  The Affair has just begun a new season on Showtime, and so far it's too soon to know if this will be another Top 10 season.   Returning in honorable mention: Chicago Fire is still superb, but still suffers from the limitations of network television.  Nordic noir:  Case, The Department Q Trilogy, Dicte - all outstanding, subtitled Scandinavian police drama that almost made the list.  Apples and oranges: Veep is hilarious, but it's impossible to rank a comedy with dramas, so I put it here in honorable mentions. Closest runner-up: The Fall's third season (BBC, streamed on Neflix) was its best yet for this sociopathic crime drama, with an Emmy-worthy performance by Gillian Anderson.

And now the Top 10:

10. Designated Survivor (ABC TV):  The only network series on my Top 10, which says how far cable and streaming have surpassed traditional network TV in the U.S.  But Designated Survivor is a worthy exception, in effect a blend of 24 and House of Cards - or Jack Bauer in the White House. Fast-paced, dangerous, and unafraid to address current controversial political issues.

9. Vikings (History Channel):  Moving up from honorable mention last year to #9 on my list this year, Vikings is superbly rendered historical drama.   What and how the Vikings managed to conquer is fascinating just as straight history, but this series brings these stories alive with unforgettable characters and breathtaking battle scenes.

8. Colony (USA Network):  Near-future Los Angeles under totalitarian alien control - aliens from outer space not other countries - debuted in 2016.  A taut, excellent mix of action and intelligent political philosophy.

7. House of Cards (Season 4) (Netflix): Back on the list, down one notch, but that's because of the tougher competition, not because of any loss of quality.  Frank and Claire Underwood remain brilliant templates of American Presidential politics and governance, becoming less hyperbolic and more in tune with our reality with every passing year, and not because House of Cards is changing.

6. Narcos (Season 2) (Netflix): We streamed seasons 1 (2015) and 2 (2016) in 2016, and loved them both.  Irresistible, brutal (how's that for a combination) docu-drama about Colombian drug-lord Pablo Escobar.

5. 19-2 (Acorn).  This is among the best beat-cop shows ever on television.  All three seasons are streaming on Acorn, with Season 3 first airing in the summer of 2016.  Originally a French-Canadian series, my wife and I enjoyed the English version so much we'll probably see the French sooner or later too. Indelible characters.

4. Travelers (Netflix).  Ok, I love science fiction, but I especially love time travel.  I said in my review of this Canadian series, now streaming on Netflix, that it was in some ways as good as 12 Monkeys.  Now that it's settled in, I think it's even better.  The thing is, Travelers starts out very slowly, so much so that I wouldn't have kept watching if I didn't have an insatiable interest in time travel stories.  But Travelers gets better very quickly, and the last four episodes are pure, incandescent genius.

3. The Girlfriend Experience (Starz): Both a lawyer and a call-girl show, and a gem of a drama.  The "girlfriend experience" gives the customer not just sex but a girlfriend for the rented time, and the situations this engenders make for an outstanding portrayal of life in the fast lane.

2.  Westworld (HBO): There's going to be more science fiction this year than last year.  I am indeed a science fiction fan (as well as author), but these series were extraordinary, and should be very appealing to everyone who doesn't dislike science fiction.  In the case of Westworld, it was a very close second to The Man in the High Castle, offering the best depiction of the profound issues in human-like artificial intelligence I've ever seen on television or in the movies.  (Humans was #9 on my list last year - its new season will be on in 2017.  I found Westworld better than Humans, as good as it was.)

1. The Man in the High Castle (Season 2) (Amazon):  This was #1 on my list last year, and this year's episodes were even better.  Goes well beyond Philip K. Dick's masterful novel in intelligent, relevant, vivid, and riveting ways.   And speaking of relevant, never more so, given the support President-elect Trump received from white supremacists in the recent election.

See also My List of the Top Ten Television Series of 2015

Dicte: Dark and Licht

A friend on Twitter suggested I watch Dicte on Netflix to feed my new-found craving for Nordic Noir, and I'm glad I did. The three-season series was one of the most thoroughly enjoyable of this genre, and though I say this about just about every show that takes place in Scandinavia or Iceland with English subtitles and American euphemisms and music, it's especially true of Dicte.

To be clear, Dicte's not all dark. There are some laughing-out-loud lines and scenes sprinkled into this drama, which is one third police procedural, one third newspaper reporter, and one third slice of life of Danish upper middle class living in the second largest city in the country, Aarhus up north.

Now whenever I see or hear that name, I feel like singing that Crosby, Stills, and Nash song - "Our House" - and Aarhus does seem like a very very fine house, but it also has its fair share of low-life residents, sickos, and the kind of people who commit a gruesome crime or two. Dicte indeed seems to have a penchant for running into dead bodies, and these provide fodder for her investigative reporter instincts and talents, much to the consternation, amusement, and appreciation of  law enforcement, depending on which day of the week it is, how desperate they are for some help, and depending on which detective you're talking about.

Like all good noir detective stories, the evil Dicte looks into eventually spills into her life and the lives of those she loves, providing heart break, tears, and stunning surprise lurking behind near and distant corners. Iben Hjejle was just fabulous in the lead role, as was Lars Brygmann as the main detective, and in fact everyone in the cast. See this on a cold night - or for that matter, even when it gets warmer.

more like Neanderthal noir

The Department Q Trilogy on Netflix: Outstanding!

Continuing our binge watching of superb Scandinavian crime drama (aptly known as Nordic Noir) on Netflix, we caught a trilogy of movies, based on the novels of Jussi Adler-Olsen - The Keeper of Lost Causes (2013), The Absent One (2014) and A Conspiracy of Faith (2016). This Department Q Trilogy, as these novels and movies are known, was flat-out superb!

We've seen a fair number of "cold case" television series in the past few years, mostly from England and the U.S.  But these Department Q tales have something more, in terms of intensity and originality of characters, and depth of stories, which range from a woman kidnapped and held in a pressure chamber for several years, to a group of rich kids in school gone very wrong, to a faith-based psycho. The last two themes are also familiar, but there's nothing familiar about the way they're laid out and developed in these three memorable movies.

The cast is completely unknown to me and I suspect most American viewers, with the exception of Fares Fares, who played a small but pivotal role in the late, lamented Tyrant on FX.   He's even better in the Department Q trilogy, playing Assad, the partner of Carl, also well played by Nikolaj Lie Kaas. Carl is on the verge of being burned out, for a variety of reasons.  His boss barely tolerates him, and he has no luck with women.  But he has a heart of a gold and an indomitable spirit, and is exactly the kind of detective you'd want on your side if your case or cause was hopeless.

American series have tried to emulate narratives like these, with new, American productions of The Killing and The Bridge, which were both very successful in their original European productions.  The American productions had their moments - I reviewed both of them in this blog - but also had their flaws, and now I intend to see the originals whenever I can.   You do have to pay attention to the subtitles in the Department Q Trilogy and all the Scandinavian productions but it's worth it - and if you speak a little Yiddish, you'll get some of the words (common roots of German and Scandinavian), not to mention occasional English words like "ok" and some choice expletives thrown in.

Case on Netflix: The Seamy Side of Iceland

Back with another review of another series I just streamed on Netflix - hey, that's an indication of how many good series Netflix is making available. This one is a police and lawyer story that takes place in Iceland - in Icelandic, with subtitles.   But I actually enjoy a subtitled television series every once in a while.

Now, I've never been to Iceland - I certainly hope to someday - but I tended to think Iceland was an idyllic community, with a life as clean and good as the virgin snow.  Well, not quite - but I certainly wouldn't have expected to find a realm of hard drug use, prostitution, and child porn to rival that found in many big American cities.

Case is all about that, and more.  It's actually the third season of a story of police and lawyers (though it's billed as the first season), which consisted of standalone episodes (like, say, Law and Order), but in the third season went for one continuous, seamless story (which I guess is why it's identified as the first season).  And a seamy, often brutally hard-hitting story it was.

Many of the major characters are in the earlier seasons, but you can pick up their back stories quickly enough in the one season (the third season) now on Netflix.  The story ultimately is a whodunit - the "it" being the drugging and sexual abusing including rape of high school girls in Iceland.  The cast consists of actors and actresses completely unknown to me, and all did a very good job.

I won't tell you who the villain is, because that's a pretty good twist.  But I will say Case will keep you on the edge of your seat, and is well worth your viewing on a snowy evening or otherwise.