Arne Dahl: Misterioso

Scandanavian crime thrillers have been spreading across the world in recent years: the superb 'The Killing', the stylish (though silly) 'The Bridge', or the various reconditionings of 'Wallander', fundamentally a Swedish version of 'Inspector Morse'. This dramatisation of a set of stories by crime write Arne Dahl about a specialist crime unit are the latest to make it to the UK; but sadly, they demonstrate that not everything is brilliant just because it's from the north. Although realist in tone, the plots of each two part episode feel immensely contrived and over-complex, while the background soap-opera, the private lives of its immensely ordinary protagonists, is both dull and obvious. And the whole thing is so slow: each three hour slug crawls forward, yet the details of the story seem hard to remember, with endless similar scenes and more blood than tension. Understated is one thing; but this is neither truly believable, nor (in any sense) fun.

This series is about a group of very incompetent cops lead by a woman who is about 100 years old. The stories are overly complicated, tedious, and with so many red herrings that after a while, the viewer gives up caring and tunes out. The events defy credibility and the way the crime is solved really pretends that logic just does not exist. Things happen without any explanation or evidence for continuity. Overall, this is just s time filler for when you have nothing in your streaming queue and you just want the TV on to make a bit of background noise.

This is a great Swedish series based on the ''A-Gruppen'' novel series by Jan Arnald (Arne Dahl is his nom de plume) which were one of the best products of the ''Nordic Noir'' genre. Unfortunately, due to the lack of English editions regarding the last novels of the series, I've only read the first six and I can honestly admit that it was a splendid and rewarding experience. The distinguishing mark of ''A-Gruppen'' books was that there were no main characters, but it was rather the team that consisted the protagonist of the series. Each novel focuses specifically on one or two members of the elite group of Swedish police, and we become familiar with their personal stories and problems, which always, as everything in Arne Dahl's novels, interconnects with the different parts of the main plot. The stories are usually perhaps a bit more complicated than absolutely needed but this doesn't spoil any of the fun. The adaptation of the novels to two one-and-a-half hour episodes allows a more or less faithful adaptation of the complex book plotlines and the final result is more than satisfying. The casting consists of a Swedish all-star group of actors such as Shanti Roney, Matias Varela, Malin Arvidsson, Claes Ljungmark and many others. ''Arne Dahl'' is a tv production worthy of the name of the great Swedish author.

I gave up during the scene where the whole team gathered at the potential victim's house in anticipation that the killer would show up that night and ended up catching the former's son. This was worthy of the Keystone Kops.

Despite having a couple of decent characters, the writing is horrible and some of the acting isn't all that great, either. I don't know what the book is like, but hopefully it's not quite as dumb as this. This feels like a police drama written by someone who has no idea what police do or how they work. It's unusual. And Viggo, one of the detectives, is incompetent and honestly too unintelligent to be a detective.

I like some of the other more recent Arne Dahl shows, but this one is pretty rough.