Baltic Crimes

I've seen four episodes so far on Amazon Prime and I love it! Reminds me of Murder She Wrote but with a more melancholic score. The setting is beautiful and I enjoyed the longer nearly movie-length pacing for each self-contained mystery. On Amazon Prime they call it The Nordic Murders, but Baltic Crimes makes more sense since it takes place on an island in the Baltic Sea in Germany near the Polish border. And because each episode doesn't necessarily contain a killing ... it is a small town after all, and it wouldn't seem realistic otherwise. I love how realistic this is; not overly dramatic like American productions like to be.

A decent watchable series with some interesting characters and half-decent plots.

I treat these as stand-alone plots and as far as continuity goes? So what....have you watched Vera?

I watched the first season. They must have not hired a police advisor. Seldom have I seen complete ignorance of proper procedure, blatant lying, and criminals allowed to go free because of connections to the prosecutors and police officers. I won't bother with the gaps in continuity. The only two likable characters were the lead's husband that she cheated on and a homeless woman whose attackers went free to protect the guilty.

This is a well-acted & well-crafted series about an odd Police Inspector on the Baltic (aka Baltic Crimes) island of Usedom, an elegant island with a German-Polish ethnicity. Played by Lisa Potthof, Marie Thiel is a Police officer with a few problems: her mom, a former judge, was just paroled after a long stretch for shooting Marie's dad; Marie, happily married to an entrepreneur & former cop, is carrying on an affair with a Polish police officer from the far side of the island; and her pretty daughter has learned of the trysts & is starting to rebel.

I was surprised when I vetted this series (it's European, after all) to find no IMDB PG content warning, but, in public interest, I can suggest you keep your hand on the FF button! The females in the show, young and older, are attractive and as aggressive as the men. (I don't know if this reflects reality or the writers' version of reality).

A funny thing I noticed in the first 2 episodes: straightforward crimes become more complicated as the story unfolds. I have never seen this style before. Also, the scenery on this Baltic isle is quite fetching. (In case you didn't know, you access it over a causeway-it's not an isle 25 miles away from the Coast.). Enjoy!

These comments are based on watching the first five episodes, the only ones to date to be available in the UK. They were watched in German with English subtitles.

This German crime series is set on the island of Usedom, just off the coast, in the Baltic. The island is mostly German but the eastern tip is over the border in Poland.

As the series starts former prosecutor, Karin Lossow, is released from prison having served her time for the killing of her husband. Her daughter, Julia Thiel, is a senior police officer on the island and she isn't keen to re-establish a relationship with her mother. Each episode features a self-contained mystery which inevitably requires Julia to work with Polish colleagues... including one she is having an affair with. In the various cases Julia's family often seem to be tangential involved; if it isn't her mother it is her teenage daughter.

I rather enjoyed this series. Its new title here is clearly aiming to get on the 'Nordic Noir' bandwagon; this is a bit unfortunate as it doesn't have that feel. It might not be as light hearted as the likes of 'Midsomer Murders' but it certainly isn't as dark in tone as 'The Killing' or 'The Bridge'. The murder mysteries are interesting and provide enough suspects to keep the viewer guessing and the main characters are interesting; their relationships adding to the story rather than detracting from it. The setting added to the series; it is part of the world I knew nothing about and the fact that it was on the German/Polish border added to the interest. I hope further episodes are made available here as the final episode shown leaves many questions unanswered. Overall I'd recommend this to fans of murder mysteries looking for a new location.