Systrabönd

I love a 6 part mini series. Nothing drags on for too long. It was well written and acted. Some unlikeable characters but it was done well. If you like European crime dramas then this is for you.

I gave this two out of the 6 episodes, and by the time I was halfway through the second, I already knew I couldn't take anymore.

Billed as a crime, drama/thriller, this feels more like a soap opera. The background, incidental elements of the story completely swamp what should've been the plot: what happened on a night, 25 years ago that resulted in the death, and now the discovery of a body in the Icelandic wilderness?

Among the many big issues for this show is that the direction and choreography is so poor. Characters don't see each other sitting in cars, 10m away, when there is almost nothing else visible on the landscape. The actors, working from a pedestrian script, have to overreact to make their point. The result is a kind of low-key amateur drama in which the only memorable moments in these first two episodes are memorable for all the wrong reasons - they are badly played, awkwardly developed, or they seem like carbon copies of scenes in similar shows from elsewhere.

Yet another TV series that first and foremost reflect this problem with scriptwriting here in Iceland.

I have the feeling that the length of the TV series was "fixed size" from the beginning, and the rest was this painful attempt to keep the actors doing, just something..fill up the boxes...

So I found it to be dull first and foremost and extremely unimaginative in addition to often stiff conversations and a large number of pointless scenes. And it's sad because this was not a low budget production, many of our finest artists, fantastic filming backgrounds...but a script thats like a mixed soup of ides that never took off, left nothing but depression, and simply un-professional writing for professional artists...

I really enjoyed watching this series and did so in only 3 evenings. The director gets the best out of the actors at all levels and the story written by the director, one of the main characters and two others really held all the way.

Make sure to see it.