Blå ögon

Imagine this: A writer comes into his boss' office - he has been told to come up with pitch for a new Swedish series, since Lord knows they're booming at the moment. The two exchange pleasantries and the boss asks what he has come up with. "Well", the writer fumbles with his papers, "I have three different ideas. How do these sound?"

• The story of intrigue and betrayal at the highest levels of the Swedish government as a disgraced staffer returns to her job to help the Minister of Justice get to the bottom of a conspiracy involving big business.
• The story of the co-founder of a nationalist party accused of racism, and how during election season his humanity slowly starts to alienate him from the cold and calculating demeanor of his spindoctors and co-workers, as he feels the party is turning into something else and becoming a heartless machinery.
• The story of the two children of a controversial right-wing politician, who, after their mother is killed by (presumably) extreme leftists, become involved with a far-right neo-nazi terror group, and how it impacts their relationship to each other.

The boss beams - "they sound great! Let's do this!". "Uhh... which one?", the writer replies meekly. "Well, why not all of them?" "I... think maybe we should stick to..." "Nonsense! I have decided! Now go out there and make me a series with all of those elements!" The writer sighed and left the room, knowing full well the impossibility of the task before him.

Blå Ögon has **so many good ideas** and it comes **so close** to realising their potential, but in the end it seemingly cannot keep up with the multitude of things going on, and the subplots never intertwine in any way whatsoever, thus leaving you with a sense that these three plots either were meant to be in entirely separate series, or that the final, brilliant plot twist that tied it all together got accidentally deleted during post-production. And it's a damn shame, because the potential is right there in front of you - you'll keep watching through the entire series eagerly waiting for the big reveal that will answer the questions that keep piling up. Why did that person die? Why is she helping him? Who was behind the attack? Why did he do that? etc. etc. and just as the plot is ramping up to the explosive finale... it ends. You're left sitting confused for a bit and then deeply disappointed in the inability of the writers to tie these otherwise excellently directed and acted scenarios together into a coherent plot. Another part where the writing struggles is with the characters. The actors do a masterful job and make them feel like real persons, but since the writing can't figure out how to do proper pacing, everybody ends up being immensely unlikeable - essentially, everyone in the entire series end up looking like either a bigot, a coward, an asshole, a turncoat or an idiot.

I'm accustomed to disappointment when it comes to TV series, but this one hit extra hard as it had all the right ingredients - brilliant ideas, brilliant acting, brilliant directing - and still managed to accomplish absolutely nothing from them. I'd say don't watch this - not because it's bad, but because the sheer amount of wasted potential will sadden you to no end.

The actors: Madelene Jacobsson, Marie Richardson, Louise Peterhoff, Cecilia Frode, Niklas Hjulström, Karin Franz Körloff & the stunt performer: Madelene Barwén Trollvik really gets visible according to my view of things.

The scriptwriters and the directing is great from my Point of view. One of few productions in modern-history of Swedish TV that succeeds as in making things interesting, money and so on!

/Joel Kullberg

Its very clear the director ran out of time and somewhere forgot several of the plot lines. The last episode failed to shed light on some gigantic plot holes and left a bad aftertaste. The hinted connections between the plots was abandoned and a big 'scew you' explanasion was shoehorned in to end the season that did not know if it would get financing for a second round.

The Swedish Show Blue Eyes is an outstanding detective in a long line of successful Scandanavian thrillers, and has the same supreme mix between crime and politics as success-story "the Killing".

Blue eyes, or Blå ögon follows Elin Hammer, the head of Staff at the ministry of Justice, who starts researching the disappearance of her predecessor Sarah. As a local politician is murdered, and Sarah remains no where to be found, the tension within the Swedish society increases after multiple attacks by terroristic group Veritas.

Right from the start the show is clouded in a big political cover-up by which puzzles about the nature of it are slowly revealed to the audience. With multiple people being killed for the identity of the main secret, Blue Eyes is extremely exciting to watch from beginning to end.

In addition, the amount of well-build characters within this over- arching story line is admirable. Even though the shows lacks some credibility here and there,the creators were able to create both sympathy and disgust for the people involved. The many inter- connected story-lines blend together to form a narrative which is both a very good "whodunnit", and a political drama which is scarily close to post-Paris reality.

The only shame here is that there were only 10 episodes, which made the ending seem rather rushed.

Overall, it must be said that with Blue Eyes, Scandanivia has found itself a new hit worthy of the same success as "the Killing".

This could have been really classy but you need to tie up numerous plot lines. Hoping for a second series but not really going to happen after four years. At least then Olin could get a change of trousers and we could rid of the red bra that never seemed to make the washing machine!