When a woman the wife of a wealthy industrialist goes missing police initially don’t know who to blame. Clues are scarce and the method of communication, often via Bitcoin, is shadowy. A family member, Anne-Elisabeth’s husband, might be the killer but could he have the means to do the crime? The trails go cold one by one.
Filmed when there was snow on the ground in Norway this show ticks all the boxes for Nordic noir, including a compelling police inspector (Yngvild Støen Grotmol) who struggles with the clues and with a hesitant management class. In addition the series is structured in sections each dedicated to a particular set of characters, such as journalists or informers, so though the plot proceeds in chronological order you are always facing in a slightly different direction when each episode starts.
Journalist Erlend Moe Riise (Christian Rubeck) is good as is another journalist, Riise’s colleague Aleks Zaretski (Victoria Ose) who flips the police narrative on its head and goes looking at alternative candidates for the killer/s.
Another key component in the overall production in my view is Aleks’ boyfriend (Jonas Strand Gravli) who uses his own style of logic to unpick problems with the police case by focusing on the reception of the case in the media, and on the ways that we “frame” or understand crimes that are discussed publicly by large numbers of people. In a sense Torv and Aleks create a foil to the stupidity of the police/media machine counting on clicks and outrage to apportion blame.
It’s an intelligent approach to a subject (murder) that is often dealt with in TV shows.
I was entertained by this wonderful show, even the criminals come out looking believable, for example the strongman Mattis (Pål Tøien) with his neck tatts and macho is a nice counterpoint to Christian’s earnest bungling.
No comments:
Post a Comment