Beck

This tv series has little to do with the classic Beck book series, beyond location and titile. Yet, it's a wonderful, wholly invented new character-driven police procedural that no doubt paved the way for so many Scandinavian and German, in particular, series. Beck is perfect, square and a worrier, yet he has a life outside the crime tales. The real invention, though is his sidekick, counterpart, Gunvald Larsson, played so well by his co-star, a very accomplished stage and film actor. Really, it's the secondary characters and storylines that work so well, quirky and ever-evolving that makes this a model production. Inger, Beck's daughter, the nutty neighbor to Beck, and even the senior police execs who drive Beck nuts. So much depth.

After having exhausted, it seemed, the supply of British mystery/police-procedural series, I turned my attention to foreign (non-English-language) productions. If you are not averse to subtitles, you will find among foreign productions some outstanding series in this genre, and "Beck" is one of them.

"Beck" – after "Wallander" and "Van Veeteren" – is the third Swedish-language police- procedural series I have watched, and it may be the best, which is high praise. I should qualify that by saying I have watched only the first 18 episodes of "Beck" (produced from 1997 to 2005), available in the USA as sets 1 through 6. Eight subsequent episodes have been produced and released on DVD, but not yet, as far as I can tell, with Region 1 encoding.

"Beck," which aired as a Swedish TV series from 1997 to 2009, is based on the books of Mai Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö in which Inspector Martin Beck, the lead detective of a special homicide team of the Swedish police, was the central character. I gather that the team (in this series) is based in Stockholm, but the crimes they investigate are not limited to that city. Each episode is approximately 90 minutes in length and represents a complete case. I found the stories to be uniformly engrossing, and in several there were twists at the end that I did not see coming.

Tying the episodes together is a cadre of well-cast, well-acted characters that appear in all, or nearly all, episodes, and other characters whose tenure spans fewer episodes. Three characters, who appear in all episodes, merit special mention: Beck: level-headed, insightful, possessed of more of an everyman quality than most leading characters (he reminded me of my junior high biology teacher); Gunvald, Beck's right-hand man: brash, swaggering, politically incorrect, tough – the iron fist in Beck's velvet glove; Grannen: Beck's wonderfully eccentric neighbor - he rarely failed to make me laugh.

Note: As a result of having read a user review (on another site) that lauded the series but was critical of the quality of the video transfer, especially in light of the fact the reviewer considered the DVD sets to be pricey, I purchased just one set and was attentive to image quality when I watched the first episode. What I found was that the video transfer is not state of the art but neither is it bad. More importantly, it quickly ceased to be an issue as I was pulled into the series. And after I finished the first set, I purchased the remaining five.

To be honest I haven't seen all the Beck movies in the series, which are 21 and counting, but the ones I've seen are well worth watching! I'm from Sweden myself and have a lot of thoughts, most of them negative, regarding Swedish movies. But Beck I like and that's quite an achievement from their part. The Beck series revolves around Martin Beck, Gunvald Larsson and their colleagues at the police force in Stockholm, Sweden. Beck is a divorced, middle-aged man while Larsson is young, forward and a quite violent man (against suspects that is). Together they make a perfect team, investigating crimes committed in Sweden, around Stockholm. The movies have a well written storyline, with diverse crimes, with no fear of showing brutal murders, horrible cases, or to go outside the Swedish border, making this series of movies great! Plot twists are only to be expected at the ending, making sure that everyone is kept in the dark of the outcome until the very end, which isn't always that easy to accomplish.

The series of movies are well-known here for a couple of things; Gunvald Larsson's short temper, and his great sarcastic lines! The neighbor of Beck, who always seem to be on sick-leave - wearing a lovely neck-collar, and who always is willing to give Beck some alcohol. And last but not least; the great actors! Peter Haber and Mikael Persbrandt are brilliant in their interpretations of Beck and Larsson.

Beck comes well recommended from my part!

This series has been around for quite a few years, and it has been airing as of lately on the MHz Network during the international mystery and drama hour each week. I'm quite enjoying it—as aforementioned by other users, the two main actors, Haber and Persbrandt (who play Martin Beck and Gunvald Larsson, respectively) are phenomenal at interpreting the roles they are assigned. The series is well-written, and each character has a great deal of personality—the viewer is able to grow with the characters as they continue their assignments throughout the series. That being said, the other actors deserve applause as well.

I would definitely recommend this program to other fans of mystery and suspense... I think this series is a bit under-appreciated where I am (I'm not from Sweden), and it deserves more publicity here, although it isn't as recent as many other shows.

Only reason I wouldnt give this a 10 is sometimes the detectives just dont act like professional law enforcement, except for Gunwald, they go into situations without weapons drawn when you can hear there is a standoff. Gunwald has great attitude and makes it look easy. Sure in the US the police are very heavy handed, i dont know if in Sweded they are actually gentler or just in this show, its a different perspective. In my area it is subtitled and I dont mind the read every episode on MHZ. The inclusion of the characters personal problems adds more realism. I recommend it to everyone, some viewers are too lazy to read.