The Team

Ok, don't take the plot too seriously but overall it is better than anything the UK is turning out these days. If you like Scandi drama, then you should like this.

OK, it isn't Borgen, The Killing or The Bridge, nor even as good as Salamander. I had pretty high expectations and it just about met them despite considerable adversity: 1. the program had Danish subtitles which is of no use to me 2. the main languages employed are Danish, Flemish and German - none of which I understand. There is a bit of French but I only get a bit of that. Some Lithuanian 3. when the Team (detectives from Denmark, Belgium and Germany) and also the bad guys speak to each they often have to use English - Hurrah! 4. my wife was able to interpret most of the German dialogue with a lot of rewinding. Under such circumstances we nearly gave up on this but we persevered and am glad we did so. If you think you can cope with that then give it a go. It has a reasonably good plot with one or two unnecessary red-herrings. It is pretty good in my opinion!

For decades, following the fall of Iron Curtain and fast development of technology, felonies and combating them have become more international as well, money laundry and human trafficking included. Thus, on one hand, it is interesting to follow diverse beautiful places and characters of different nationalities performed by respective actors speaking respective languages, but when the series of eight 1-hour episodes deals with one "enemy", then the plot becomes perfunctory and the role of leading characters unbalanced, with some obtaining too much unnecessary attention and the others' characteristics remain unfinished, with several questions unanswered.

The police characters are obviously realistic, but often not too interesting to follow, and even Lars Mikkelsen is unable to show his talent in full. Plus it is odd that Alexandra Rapaport had so insignificant character. And Jasmin Gerat as Jackie Müller and Veerle Baetens as Alicia Verbeeck provided just okay, but not memorable performance, and those depicting Lithuanians were not particularly catchy, somehow underlining the role of Eastern European villains. Plus, of course, Belgium as a symbol of negligence and corruption...

All in all, not a bad creation, but not on the level of e.g. The Eagle: A Crime Odyssey ("Ørnen: En krimi-odyssé).

I was a fan of Crossing Lines, another European import running on Netflix, and when I read an introductory blurb on MHz there seemed to be some similarities so I decided to give it a try. Both my wife and I enjoy it. The team of European cops assembled to find what appears to be a serial killer is quite good. While they are supposed to work together there are some internal rivalries and one of the countries seems to have its own hidden agenda which they expect to stay that way.

The episodes are short, one hour each, and the story moves along at a crisp pace. Harald Bjorn, the titular leader of the team, seems to have a past with another member; and she seems to be having some issues of her own with her husband. The subplots don't take anything away from the main story, and provide us with back stories on team members.

There are eight episodes you need to commit to if you want all the pieces to fall into place. The cast seems to be quite good and work together well. I would recommend it as it is so much better than the usual crap we see on American TV. If having to read subtitles is a turn off then you will probably take a pass; but I was amazed at how much of the dialogue was English.

Two episodes into season #2 I was fast forwarding constantly because I found it dragging horribly ... but was curious about the outcome. Sometimes it's hard to look away from a car crash as they say ...and season #2 was certainly that. Awfully cliched characters and some pretty hard to believe police procedural work.