JordanGairean64

Going into this I had seen it get relatively good reviews, with emphasis on "relatively", from critics. By that, I mean that most episodes of Beck tend to get lower than 3/5, while this one had been rated nothing under 3 by critics, even having 4/5 on one website. Though it shouldn't have been surprising, I was surprised by how bad I thought this was, considering the relative critical praise which I have rarely seen for a Beck episode.

First of all, the expected; the dialogue is truly so-and-so. I was first going to say that it's expected because it's always been that way in Beck, but that would be untrue, since the first few seasons of the show if anything had good dialogue as one of the subtle selling points. It's rather expected because the last maybe 3 seasons have felt AI-generated in dialogue, and this one really topped it. It's heavily expository, humorless and only meant to serve the plot, more or less giving up on the possibility that the audience might in any way at all actually take interest in any of the characters. The dialogue that is not expository is, first of all rare if not near extinct, but also uninteresting, and unfortunately often meaningless.

Valter Skarsgård was praised for his acting as Vilhelm, which... I can't say I agree with. He's not terrible, but he's played roughly the same character in everything I've seen him in so far, and I think his acting lacks personality. That's not to say he has to be some Ernst-Hugo Järegård in eccentricities, but there's nothing special or charismatic about his portrayal in a way that's gonna help this show survive if he were to replace Peter Haber. I also have a hard time getting past the fact that Vilhelm was supposed to be only half Swedish and had black hair and tanned skin in the early episodes, only to now have blonde hair, pasty skin and green eyes. Could it be because he's a Skarsgård...

The story isn't bad but is somewhat ruined by the premise of Beck itself; it would've benefitted from getting more time to develop, and one episode is hardly enough for that. They could've made a whole 4-episode miniseries just about them and it would've been better. One critic mentioned garnering sympathy for the perpetrators, which isn't unreasonable, but I don't get how one could do that considering the little time you get to follow them. I thought they gave more of a "one-shot villain in american 70s tv show"-impression.

The last minutes were unexpected but it didn't shock me. "Oh so that just happened". I guess one could see a bunch of different interpretations of that but I don't really get the point of putting it in. Did they just... run out of ideas? The conversation between Martin and Vilhelm near the end is in my opinion an example of the aforementioned non-expository but still bad dialogue in this show. It's awkward and feels forced.

As a final verdict, I immediately thought "uninspired" would be the right word for this, but bland works pretty well too. They are going for a "dark" direction with Beck, but they're doing so in a way that, at least in my opinion, makes it uninteresting. Mikael Persbrandt wanted a hollywood career, Ingvar Hirdwall committed suicide, and Peter Haber is getting old. The original components that made this show likeable are pretty much gone.

On one hand, this is well-made, well-acted and reasonably well-written. Objectively, I quite like what this series has to offer. It's dark and depressing, and pretty visually interesting in that regard. There are quite a lot of national star actors here as well, both Joel Spira and Björn Bengtsson are for example rightfully known for being genuinely great at portraying important side characters, and I have little to no idea how they got our possibly most famous contemporary actor Mikael Persbrandt to portray Hans Holmér, which he then again does with mixed success.

So in general, I have little against the actual production of this series, in fact I like it. But I'm unable to enjoy watching it, frankly because it's crazy that this was even allowed to be made. It would've been fine if you were to copy everything about this, blend it, and paste it into an original story with new characters and a somewhat changed plotline. Instead, what is left is an accusation of murdering a beloved prime minister directed at a man who has been dead for 20 years, based among other things on nonexistent technical evidence.

Now, I'm not saying Engström didn't do it. It's very possible he did. What annoys me, however, is the way the show smugly portrays it as an indisputable fact. Engström is, admittedly, the "official killer" of Palme, but that's a conclusion that was made relatively recently in history. And that's not even an argument for this show existing, since it's supposed to be based on the book of the same name, making it intellectual property, also allowing it to exist without much controversy since the production can say "oh, this is just based on a book". It's IP in the same way as En Helt Vanlig Familj, I Dina Händer, Störst Av Allt, and En Del Av Dig, except this actually concerns real people, which I for one consider morally dubious.

Which I guess would be another message to Netflix, not that they're gonna read this: make less IP content! Make more things like Kärlek & anarki, which was original, funny, and actually had some soul to it.

When I started watching this my hopes weren't that high. A friend of mine had mentioned watching it, and though he didn't actually say anything about what he thought of it, the way he mentioned it implied that it was kind of average; watchable but nothing special. But hey, everyone seemed to have watched it, so I put it on. My attention span is fried and I'll probably be bored in about 20 minutes. I'll turn it off and go to sleep.

As you can tell, that's not what happened. This was great. Really great. The acting is superb, especially from Alexandra Karlsson Tylefors who plays Stella, but just about everyone does a great job portraying realistic and complex characters. The story really captured my fried attention span and actually made me engage in it. It's also beautifully filmed, which contrasts the often dark and depressing events of the story.

Strong characterization, dialogue and script. In a sense, I think this series does well what a lot of Swedish crime drama shows typically do wrong. Instead of rejecting characterization for the sake of an uninteresting criminal investigation the audience really couldn't care less about, this show is smart enough to give you an actual reason for caring to follow the characters involved in the case, which then also makes you actually want to follow the story concerning the criminal investigation.

I was, atleast, at the edge of my seat watching it. It's probably the first time in one or two years that I've prioritized watching a tv show before sleeping. This is the Swedish Netflix production I've liked the most so far, even though most other users on here seem to disagree. Swedish streaming services; take notes.