Traque en série

Recommended and indeed gifted to me by my brother, "Those Who Kill" is another Nordic Noir series putting together a male and female lead to hunt down serial killers in Denmark.

I've just watched the first episode bringing together Katrine Jensen, a young, rebellious and ambitious detective and an outside profiler turned lecturer, Thomas Schaeffer, with unsatisfactory experience of working with Katrine's Super on previous cases. I can't think why, when in this episode, one relatively minor mistake apart, he uses his instincts to track down the murderer just in time to rescue Katrine from his clutches.

The man/woman detective duo fronting the show isn't original, especially in this field neither is the plotting which sees the killer victimising, breaking down and torturing his female prey and Katrine then quickly becoming his next target. The visual style is hardly different from its predecessors either with grisly crime scenes and the pitting of wits between good and evil filmed in a grey, grimy backdrop.

I found the story rather raced to its conclusion and took too many giant leaps in the continuity process with some unaccountable actions by all the major participants. That said, if was grittily realistic and reasonably gripping throughout. I'm sort of hoping there will be no romantic entanglement between the two leads to distract from the detective work although to be fair, this didn't happen in "The Killing" or "The Bridge". I like that the leads too seem to have less "strange cargo" to carry too. I don't mind a bit if background shading but really just want to watch a thrilling mystery show without the sometimes obligatory emotional baggage.

I've the rest of the first series to watch and will do so soon, going by what I saw here.

The creators of Den som dræber were apparently willing to combine CSI- type and Mentalist-type of series, but mind-twisting together with genuine slides of malformed dead bodies, villains are serial killers only, and not-so-catchy main characters (Laura Bach as Katrine Ries Jensen and Jakob Cedergren as Thomas Schaeffer) have not attracted so much popularity as e.g. Forbrydelsen, Broen or Ørnen: En krimi-odyssé. True, there are some fine performances - Lars Mikkelsen in all the episodes and Ulrich Thomsen and Kim Bodnia both in 2 episodes, but the overall pace is sometimes uneven, sometimes protracted; there are 5 different stories over 2 episodes each, and the 1st part of every story includes a summary what will happen in the second episode - annoying for a crime drama where moments of surprise carry a significant weight.

All in all, the series in question is not bad, but it is definitely overshadowed by the series mentioned above. So if you have/need a choice, you better watch the others.

Those Who Kill - Den Son Draeber - 10 Episodes -2011

Quite difficult to believe this was the source material for the Apple series of the same name.

This series was a very traditional teaming up of a police homicide unit with a criminal psychologist, just like Cracker! The murders were complex and gruesome and mainly resolved within the episode.

The acting was brilliant the stories unpredictable and yes, whilst there were some quite ridiculous plot twist this was sacrificed for the story. Laura Bach was great as was Jakob Cedergren, they should have made some more series.

I think this is a firm 7 out of 10 for unpredictability.

Bit apprehensive at first to watch a movie with subtitles again but these type of movies/series you really need to watch in it's original language (its actually fun trying to understand words, you'll be surprised how much you'll actually pickup). It's a very good series, believable in many ways. There are nut cases out there indeed, maybe not as sophisticated as these in the series but it's filmed in a believable way. It's not about all guns blazing, it's about characters, mistakes, reality which is what makes this so good. If you're after action, car chases, explosions, machine gun fire, you're in the wrong place. If you like mystery, bit of love, bit of human relations, bit of thriller, watch it. It's not a 10 as I think there is some acting that could be improved on and maybe conclusions are sometimes a bit far fetched/too easy found, but a 9 is pretty damn high I would think.

Much as I like Danish crime dramas, for me, Those Who Kill, has some conspicuous flaws that can not be overlooked.

Perhaps the biggest is how easily the criminologist who supports the key female lead in the first episode is "blamed and written off", by her boss when things turn pear shaped. This is in spite of the fact he leads the team to the killer's lair in the first episode and he's in no way to blame for what transpires, thereafter. This is explained somewhat in latter episodes but still, it all seems a bit of a stretch.

There are other examples that are implausible too, such as intentionally taking a child into a dangerous armed hostage situation.

That's not to say Those Who Kill is not watchable. It's well acted and and directed. Some of the episodic stories premises are novel too. That said, those positives are let down to a degree by some not insubstantial weaknesses in the back story.

Six out of ten from me.