Maria Wern

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 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.

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.

Maria is Sebstian's supervisor. They are lovers and live together. They are always at crime scenes together even when it is unnecessary. They are put in situations when one is responsible for the well-being, safety, and security of the other. Situations when one makes decisions that otherwise would not be made if they weren't lovers. Ridiculous. No police department in the world would allow such a situation to continue. For me, it detracts from generally interesting stories, beautiful scenery, and acting and dialogue that has improved with time. Although at times the two lovers act like teenagers.

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!