Arne Dahl: Mörkertal

Somewhere you can almost detect a faint interesting story, but as in many Swedish productions you get non-convincingly delivered dialogue with bad timing, odd body language and clearly fake feelings. This time with cliche stacked upon cliche as well.

Everything is underlined with how you're supposed feel about the subject of these two episodes. Which would be totally unnecessary if the authors trusted their story to shine a light on it all. Clearly they didn't feel they could trust themselves and we can all see why.

Everyone is caricature, also the police characters. The only one standing out and delivering something real is Shanti Rooney as Internal Affairs Police Officer Paul Hjelm. Vitali and Arvidsson really can do better.

A great disappointment.

To be honest, this series has some continuing implausibilities. In light of the perpetual shortage of resources - alluded to in earlier episodes - we wonder precisely why so many people in Group A are involved in solving one case, especially when most of their responsibilities consist of interviewing suspects. There is also the rather obvious fact that the two female detectives Ida (Natalie Minnevik) and Sara (Vera Vitali) put themselves continually in danger by casing lonely properties without sufficient back-up (even though it is always on the way).

Nonetheless, if we are prepared to overlook such flaws and treat each episode on its own terms, then MÖRKERTAL (HIDDEN NUMBERS) is one of the best of the current series. A fifteen-year-old girl Lykke from a Pentecostal religious family goes missing; it transpires that she has become involved in a pedophile racket wherein teenage girls are stripped and filmed performing unspeakable sexual acts for the male viewers' pleasure. Meanwhile a local gang- leader is out to wreak revenge on the gang for having forced his teenage daughter into sex against her will. Caroline Cowan's production is rife with revulsion against an unspeakable series of crimes committed against innocent children: the pedophiles should get what they deserve.

In a parallel subplot, we find out that Kerstin Holm's (Malin Arvidsson's) love-life has become more and more complicated as she faces the prospect of moving in with younger cop Bengt (Alexander Karim). Both of their dreams are shattered by a shocking ending that upsets our expectations of how a detective series should be constructed.

Efficiently filmed in a gray, anonymous series of rural landscapes, HIDDEN NUMBERS reveals how easy it is to commit crimes and conceal them from public view, especially in some of Sweden's most under- populated regions.