Harjunpää

Disturbing police procedural portraying the dark and gritty underbelly of society. Very reminiscent of Silent Witness stories if you put aside the pathology aspect, the series has a focus on the motivations of the perpetrators and what drives them to commit their crimes. The novels the series is based on were mostly written in the 80's by a serving sergeant in the Helsinki violent crime unit providing fictionalised accounts of the cases he worked on.

Don't expect inspired deductive work from the detectives though, these are by the numbers police officers who spend most of their time grumbling about their working hours and failing to respond with urgency when given leads that could prevent further crimes.

This Finnish crime series is set in the city of Helsinki, as its English name suggests, and is centred on two cops; Timo Harjunpää and Onerva Nykänen. Each story takes place over the course of two episodes. This is not really a murder mystery series; in most stories the identity of the criminals is made clear to the viewer from the start and a fair amount of each story is spent following the criminals activities. The cases are varied; in one an incel killer is targeting women, in the second two teenage boys attack a drunk man and in the third a couple launch a campaign of computer based misery against a millionaire. Away from their work we see how their careers impact on their family lives.

I thought this was a solid series. I was expecting a murder-mystery but wasn't disappointed by this series' different approach. Knowing the identity of the criminals means we can understand their motives even when they are clearly unreasonable. Timo and Onerva are good protagonists; they come across as ordinary people doing a difficult job rather than the typical 'characters' on finds in crime dramas. The cast does a solid job; most obviously Olli Rahkonen and Olga Temonen as our two leads. Overall I'd recommend this to fans of crime drama who don't mind the lack of mystery; I hope we get the second season here soon.

These comments are based on watching the first season in Finnish with English subtitles.

There is so much lacking that I'm not sure where to start.

There is hardly any in-depth character development - at all.

Which seems to be both due to script as well as storyline as well as a lack of ability of the actors.

There is no real suspense buildup of any kind and you're kinda left scratching your head at what's "happening" - or not.

I honestly gave it a fair shot but was mostly left with a lot of question marks throughout every episode & generally underwhelmed.

I would call it amateuristic but an amateur series can still be good. This serie just shows a lack of talent imho and I wonder how no one was honest enough to tell the maker(s) during the proces.

I'm intrigued by two issues that keep repeating in this series. Almost as if the writers had a purpose in making this other than the just making a tv show show.

The first is that the police in Finland are grossly underpaid. There are constant references to senior police almost living in poverty, unable to look after their families.

There is also an obsession with the claim that junior offenders don't get punished there. In many scenes the offenders are arrested and lean back unaffected and say "it's ok I'm underage - I'll just get off with community service"

I felt like screaming at the tv "just record the conversation and play it to the judge!"

Many of the issues concerning the privates lives of the police are just bland and uninteresting as if they just felt the need to throws that in.

Very depressing series with depresses characters. Helsinki need a PR team to counter balance this show. Each two part crime is seedy with unlikeable characters and a team of police who generally stumble upon DNA or an eyewitness to solve the crime. So many other cop shows do it better.such as Thin Blue Line from Sweden.