Maria Wern

Years ago I belonged to MHz Choice and watch many Scandie Noir series. Maria Wern was one of my favorites., in part because of the amazing Eva Rose (who plays Maria). Also because of the very good mysteries.

Recently I've found that the series has kept on going and it just keeps getting better and better.

The action takes place in Gotland, Sweden.. So we've got another small place that has an inordinate number of murders!

Maria is a police detective and works with a dedicate team.

Somewhere along the way a partner named "Sebastian" shows up and the sparks fly. The two characters (Maria and Sebastian) AND the two actors. (Eva and Erik) have a wonderful chemistry that to the writers' and actors' credit does not overwhelm a la "Moonlighting".

It is good and if you have a chance, worth watching it.

This was an excellent series! I really got invested in the characters and the storylines just got more intense and suspenseful ! The characters were very endearing with a touch of humor making them more human. Very good writing and acting overall.

I'm bummed however that we are only able to watch two seasons out of nine.

I hesitate to keep my Masterpiece subscription if this happens again. Get the entire series or nothing at all! Please do better as your paying customers expect to enjoy entire series.

For now I recommend the show but only if you don't care it's only two out of nine seasons.

Maria Wern is a policewoman who deals with the unusual high amount of murders on the Swedish Island of Gotland.

The early seasons does not work well as a series and more as self-standing movies with huge plot holes and inconsistent writing. Things that has happened in earlier episodes seems to not matter in the next.* But the last season's has gotten better with Warner Bros. Taking an interest and making the story better. But still, this is not a masterpiece and you need to have a little suspension of disbelief when watching these kind of shows. But overall, it really has improved and I hope that season 9 will be much better.

*Especially in season 3 where lots of murders take place and has almost no impact on the characters.

This Scandinavian series is set in Gotland, which is the only saving grace for it. The writing is terrible, the editing much, much worse. The stories make no sense and the ridiculous manner in which they are edited offers little in the way of a continuous narrative. The scenes are often randomly sequenced without any regard for logic. It's as if the story is made up on the fly without using a story board to tell it. The actors are drawn from the usual small, recycled pool of Swedish actors, many of whom have been seen in other Swedish productions year after year. Many of the scenes have tremendous bloopers, which make them quite laughable. It's really a very poor level of production.

This series has been going on for ages, and originally it was not much to brag about, even the dialogue felt very stilted and the whole thing wasn't that good, so not surprising it went directly to DVD for two seasons.

But then Warner Bros. And a few other more foreign companies took notice, and from say series 6 it is damned good.

As good as many British crime series, and that is a surprise! The actors are surprisingly good, even the young ones, and the dialogue and story is now very good.

I rarely like Swedish series, but this is top notch!