Tag Archives: Scandinavian crime drama
Nordic Noir: Walter Presents confirms All The Sins return
NORDIC NOIR: First trailer for Detektiven från Beledweyne drops
NORDIC NOIR SVT releases Blackwater trailer
Swedish channel SVT has released a trailer for Händelser vid vatten (Blackwater) and has revealed the transmission date.
The crime drama, based on Kerstin Ekman’s novel of the same name, takes us back to midsummer eve, 1973. Annie and daughter Mia find two murdered tourists at the river’s edge near the village of Svartvattnet.
It stars Pernilla August, Alba August, Asta Kamma August and former Wallander actor Rolf Lassgård star.
It’s set to premiere on 15th January.
Wisting season 2: BBC Four confirms transmission date
As we said at the weekend, season two of Nordic Noir, Wisting, is on its way back. BBC Four dropped the first trailer for the show, and now we know when it’s going to be on.
The second series sees Larvik detective William Wisting (Sven Nordin) taking on two of the most challenging cases of his career. He first faces a race against time to hunt down an escaped killer before the latter can strike again, and then has to solve the macabre mystery behind an unknown woman’s head placed on a spike in the centre of Larvik.
In BBC Four tradition, the channel will play out two episodes per week.
Wisting (s2): Saturday 15th October, 9pm, BBC Four
NORDIC NOIR BBC Four confirms Wisting season 2
Viewers of BBC Four’s current Saturday-night German series KaDaWe last night (Saturday 1st October) got a nice surprise at the end of the episodes – a new trailer for Wisting season two was shown.
This confirms the channel’s acquisition of the show’s second series. It as always likely but now we have confirmation.
In series two, The second series sees Larvik detective William Wisting (Sven Nordin) taking on two of the most challenging cases of his career. He first faces a race against time to hunt down an escaped killer before the latter can strike again, and then has to solve the macabre mystery behind an unknown woman’s head placed on a spike in the centre of Larvik.
However, there is some speculation that BBC Four will show series two and three (both four episodes long) in one block, referring to it as series two.
We’re awaiting the confirmed transmission date.
READ MORE: ALL OUR NEWS AND REVIEWS OF WISTING
SERIES REVIEW Entrapped
Andri and Hinrika are back!
Continue reading SERIES REVIEW Entrapped
NORDIC NOIR Camilla Läckberg crime drama The Beach Hotel starts production
Viaplay has announced that Camilla Läckberg (pictured) will return to the streaming service to write a new crime series.
The Beach Hotel has been described by the streamer as a “thrilling blend of soap opera and crime drama.”
To celebrate his 60th birthday, Werner Gyllenmark holds a party at his beach hotel and invites his family, employees and even his arch-enemy, Egil Grip. But the event ends abruptly with an accident that shocks the entire town – and slowly but surely, explosive secrets emerge that some people will go to any lengths to keep hidden.
With production underway, filming takes place in the idyllic Swedish coastal town of Varberg, and the series will premiere exclusively on Viaplay in 2023.
REVIEW Trom (S1 E3&4/6)
Faroese crime drama Trom got off to a good, solid start in its opening two episodes. It was absorbing without being totally edge-of-your-seat but had an interesting set of characters as well as a solid central murder mystery. Of course, being based in the Faroes Trom also – and quite understandably – exploited its incredible surroundings to good effect.
I now want to go to the Faroe Islands. But that’s by the by.
Now we’re up to the halfway stage, we’re starting to get somewhere in the case of the murdered activist, Sonja Á Heyggi.
What is Hannis up to in Trom?
Her father Hannis Martinsson is doing his best to snoop around the islands, trying to find out what happened to her and why. He sneaks back into Sonja’s sealed-off house and finds a map – so he does what any good hunter does and follows that map. In this instance, that means visiting each location Sonja marked on it, which all have something to do with local millionaire and capitalist extraordinaire, Ragnar í Rong (who we met briefly in the first episode).
Indeed, we’re being led down a road where Ragnar looms large at the end of it. It seems he owns all of the big business on the island, is the ‘benevolent’ friend of Sonja’s mother Aurora and, to boot, is in cahoots with the police chief, Karla’s stern boss. He also threatened Påll in hospital and told him to keep his mouth shut, and Sonja was investigating him, too.
And, let’s face it… his name is Ragnar í Rong, which actually sounds villainous. (He’s played by Olaf Johannessen, by the way, who’s been in ALL THE NORDIC THINGS.)
Karla having a tough time in Trom
Elsewhere, Karla is having a tough time of things.
She’s fully aware that this could be the biggest murder investigation in Faroese history, and she’s feeling the pressure. As if to demonstrate people under pressure make bad decisions, Karla has already been a bit naughty by accessing Sonja’s phone and seeing her son Gunnar is somehow implicated in the mystery (another favourite Nordic Noir trope… the implicated teenager), and then deleting CCTV footage of the two meeting one night in the street from the database. And now she has found that he’s carrying Sonja’s treasured necklace in his belongings.
But there’s a small lead in the case, exposed by the brilliant, small-but-mighty Anita – a local mechanic was found to have worked on both Påll and Sonja’s cars before the former inexplicably came off the road.
This mechanic – Bergur – is a former drug addict and dealer. Whose rehab facility did he use to dry out? Ragnar’s, of course.
We’re into the final two episodes next week, and I’m wondering if Ragnar is too obvious a villain. Could something be going on at Glisli college, a place where threats to Sonja originated from? Could Gunnar have something to do with all of this?
We’ll soon find out.
Paul Hirons
READ MORE: OUR EPISODES ONE AND TWO REVIEW
REVIEW Trom (S1 E1&2/6)
Apologies, life has gotten in the way of this latest Nordic Noir, but I’m happy to say I’m catching up. And not a moment too soon.
We’ve followed the journey of Trom right from its inception, not least because it’s the first crime series to be based on the beautiful, epic and windswept Faroe Islands. And now it’s with us here in the UK, and BBC Four, which feels like a fitting home for the show… especially when you consider the likes of The Killing and The Bridge came before it.
As usual for BBC Four, the series is being played out in double-bills every Saturday night, and there’s certainly enough here to sate the Nordic Noir fans who love to tweet along on social media during broadcasts.
And the good news is that Trom has plenty to love about it and is a veritable checklist for favourite Nordic Noir tropes and themes. Moody, atmospheric scenery? Check. Obsessive main character? Check. Big-corporation skullduggery? Check. Murder? Of course there is!
Who is who in Trom on BBC Four?
We’re first introduced to Sonja Á Heyggi (Helena Heðinsdóttir), a young woman and activist on the islands, who is proving to be a thorn in the side of many. She’s against whale hunting and Sonja and her pals like nothing more than to sabotage hunts, which puts her at odds with many on the islands. If you know anything about the Faroes, it’s that these small communities have whale hunting in their blood – it’s an industry as well as a deep cultural thread.
Sonja receives a message from her friend and fellow activist, Påll, a journalist who is working on something pretty big. He’s on his way to meet Sonja when his car goes off the road, injuring him to the extent that he’s placed in a medically-induced coma.
Sonja, convinced the accident is no accident, now fears for her life, especially now she’s the custodian of all of Påll’s background work on this unnamed case, which we’re told in episode two, uncovers corruption in the judicial system, big corporate business and even the police.
When Sonja goes to the police, the chief – Karla Mohr (Maria Rich) – is non-plussed about the activist and the so-called threats she has received.
And that’s when we meet our main character – international investigative journalist and Faroese native, Hannis Martinsson (Ulrich Thomsen). He has a history of bringing down corporations and exposing all manner of shady goings-on. So when he touches down in Denmark, he sees he has received a message via Facebook Messenger from Sonja, who matter-of-factly explains that she is the daughter he didn’t know he had and that she needs his help with a case she’s working on. She also mentions that she thinks she is in danger.
Armed with all of his head-scrambling information – and wanting to find out if she is indeed his daughter – he hops on a plane and goes back to his homeland.
He’s too late.
In a matter of hours, Sonja is found dead, facedown in the shallow tide.
Hannis is on the case in Trom
So we have several things in play here – the trope of a person going back to their homeland, and therefore rubbing up against a past they’d rather forget, a murder mystery, and we get to know Hannis, a driven and, some would argue, selfish, man – perhaps even a touch enigmatic – who is great at investigation but really bad at inter-personal relationships. He’s taciturn, furrowed-of-brow and not an easy person to like, but he’s our protagonist and the eye through which we follow this case.
Driven by guilt and his natural instinct to investigate stories, it’s not long before he’s picking up where his daughter left off.
Another person who’s feeling the strain (and the guilt) is police chief Karla. A case like this needs help from Denmark, but so far she’s refusing to comply. After all, she’s the one who dismissed Sonja as a bit of a crackpot.
After episode two, with the story set up, little twists were beginning to be introduced (not least Karla resorted to scanning Sonja’s DEAD FACE in the morgue in order to gain access to her phone). Hannis, too, is finding crumbs of information as he starts to stick his nose in.
All of this is set on the stunning Faroes. The pace of this drama – certainly in these opening two episodes – is quite slow, but what hooks you in is the verdant, green scenery, the epic mountains and the islands’ customs and characters (I’m pretty sure there’s some product placement in here, too). The bars, the industry, the gorgeous wooden houses, the people and the language (although a lot of people in this seem to be speaking Danish). Let’s face it when you see a character credit for ‘seaweed farmer’ in the closing credits, you know you’re not in Kansas anymore.
A good, solid and very absorbing start.
Paul Hirons
The Killing Times 