Following the massive success of
the TV/film adapations of Stieg Larsson's "Millenium Trilogy"
and the series THE KILLING (and its American remake)
comes the latest "Nordic Noir" ARNE DAHL, based on a
series of bestselling novels by Jan Arnald (using the titular
pen name) centering on investigations by Swedish CID's "Team A"
consisting of CID prosecutor Jenny Hultin (Irene Lindh, A
MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH) and recruited cops Paul Hjelm (Shanti
Roney, OLDBOYS), Kristen Holm (Malin Arvidsson, MOUTH TO
MOUTH), Viggo Norlander (Claes Ljungmark, BEFORE THE
STORM), Aarto Söderstedt (Niklas Ĺkerfelt, WHEN ONCE WE
WALKED), Jorge Chavez (Matias Varela, EASY MONEY),
and Gunner Nyberg (1998 World's Strongest Man Magnus Samuelsson)
who balance their harried personal lives with their brutal
professional ones.
A series of brutal assassinations of Swedish financiers brings
the group together in "Misterioso" (for some reason titled "The
Blinded Man" on the British release). While suspended cop Hjelm
looks into the extracurricular associations the victimshave in
common - including the animosity created by five prospective
victims splitting off from a medieval masonic order - and
discovers a heinous crime, Aarto suspects a serial killer rather
than a professional hit while Norlander places himself in direct
peril following leads that tie to a Russian mobster (Mait
Malmsten). Holm looks into a lead tied to bootleg vodka while
Chavez follows a musical clue involving an ultra-rare holy grail
of a recording of a Thelonious Monk performance (the titular "Misterioso").
Theory after theory falls through with each new killing sending
the investigators on a desperate search for social or business
associations to tie things together.
Team A is back in "Bad Blood" when a Swedish film critic is
found murdered in Newark, New Jersey. His torture/murder matches
the modus operandi of the "Kentucky Killer" who has eluded
capture in the states for over thirty years and has claimed more
than twenty-four victims (with a break in between). Having
cancelled the critics ticket home and taken his spot under an
assumed identity, the killer slips past the team at the airport
in Arlanda and seems to resumed his crimes in Sweden. What first
seem like false leads reveals a more complex picture of the
killer while also exposing dubious operations by other agencies.
In their home lives, Hjelm worries about his son's behavior,
Nyberg is conflicted over contacting his children after fifteen
years, Holm begins a relationship with a priest (Carl Kjellgren),
Norlander finds his virility strangely revived after his
near-death experience in "Misterioso", and Hultin reconnects
romantically with FBI agent Larner (George Harris, LAYER CAKE)
when he comes to Sweden to collaborate on the manhunt.
The car-bombing of a Swedish automobile in Amsterdam sets things
in motion in "On Top of the Mountain" as the team try to
discover the connection between a Dutch gang, the "hate crime"
article-writing journalist who owned the car, its passengers
(including a drug squad undercover agent), and a restaurant
belonging to a celebrity chef (Jacob Nordenson,
THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST) with friends in
high places. Nyberg has been helping out Sara Svenhagen (Vera
Vitali, BLIND) on a child pornography case, and is in for a
shock when he rejoins the team on the case. Outside of work,
Holm is grieving for her dead lover, Hjelm continues to deal
with marital strife, Norlander discovers that he's a "baby
daddy" as the result of his one night stand with Astrid (Sannamari
Patjas), and Nyberg and Chavez clash over their shared interest
in Sara.
In "Many Waters", Svenhagen has not only been recruited to Team
A, she has also become Mrs. Chavez. Hjelm and Holm are loaned
out to internal affairs to investigate the shooting of an
illegal immigrant - who happened to also be the son of the
Minister of Health of Nigeria - by officer Dag Lundmark (Henrik
Norlén, CRUSHED) who was one engaged to Holm. Lundmark
vanishes after the first interrogation, and the search is
sidetracked when a self-proclaimed "master thief" (Per Sandberg,
UNDER THE SUN) leads Norlander and Soderstadt to a dead
man whose suspicious suicide note announces that he was a serial
killer and reveals the location of the bodies. Holm is taken off
of the Lundmark case because her personal involvement is
clouding her judgement, but she does not reveal that her ex
seems to be unhinged and stalking her. While Hjelm and Svenhagen
lead the search for the bodies, Norlander and Soderstadt try to
track down the thief to find out his connection to the dead man
(whose death was not a suicide), and Chavez and Nyberg
investigate connection of the dead immigrant to a mysterious
pharmaceuticals company.
The first season closes out with "Europa Blues" in which the
brutal murder of a Jewish neurobiologist (Fredrik Ohlsson,
THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO) in a Jewish cemetery
above the grave of an unknown corpse takes Soderstedt to Turin
to question a corrupt banker (Venantino Venantini,
CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD) and to Weimar to investigate
WWII-era Nazi pain center experiments. Back in Sweden, Hjelm and
Norlander look into the doctor's family background and reads his
diaries of concentration camp captivity, Holm and Svenhagen
search for the connection of the dead man to six Ukranian
refugees while Nyberg and Chavez investigate the death of a man
fed to wolverines in the local zoo. Hultin finds herself having
to make a difficult decision when the higher-ups want the unit
to function with three lesser team members. In their personal
lives, Hjelm and his wife (Frida Hallgren) contemplate ending
their marriage, Nyberg connects romantically with a linguistics
expert, Norlander develops a phobia to radioactivity in his
cellphone, Holm goes through bureaucratic red tape to gain
custody of her long-lost son, Soderstadt inherits knowledge of a
tragic legacy along with three million kroner from a great
uncle, and Chavez and Svenhagen reach an impasse over the issue
of having children.
The five two-parter miniseries have been released separately in
their native Sweden but are collected in a boxed set in the UK
as "The Complete First Season". Hopefully, this means
that there are indeed additional installments intended (although
there is no listing of additional titles at IMDb yet), as a lot
is left up in the air at the conclusion of episode ten (the
second part of "Europa Blues") including the various family
issues, Hultin's decision of who's out, and the running
whimsical supernatural element involving the unit office's
Persian (not Iranian) cleaning man Aram Razai (César Sarachu,
THE PIANO TUNER OF EARTHQUAKES). As thrilling as the
stories are, the details of the characters' personal lives can
sometimes be trying for the viewer, Hultin's random pairings
assignments of investigators to look into various angles of the
cases seems contrived for personal drama or comic relief more
than their skillsets, and of course the way that the characters
are assigned to seemingly unrelated crimes and incidents somehow
that all end up tying to the main case is a little far-fetched,
yet here it manages to be less tired and more entertaining than
in just about every episode of every series of LAW & ORDER.