Roslund & Hellström: Cell 8

This series is one of the most ridiculous I have ever watched. It started okay I guess in the first episode, but it quickly spirals totally out of control. The plot is so silly, stupid and completely unbelievable that it is cringe. Nothing in this series would ever happen. Just never. The things the swedish police does is just.. I do not even know what to say. The ending is of course stupid. The swedish actors suck as they always do. Just do not waste your time on this piece of crap. Watch something like Bron, Kastanjemannen, Snabba Cash or Forbrydelsen instead, those are great Nordic drama shows.

Convoluted but ultimately makes its point. A system based on punishment in the process turns the victim (i.e. The family of the murdered person) into malignant obsessed perpetrator.

In some ways the love interest detracted from the effectiveness of the narrative. I would have liked to see more character development around the boy's father and childhood friends who in the scenario were the most aggrieved parties to this crime.

The capture scene was contrived and shallow. There should have been more analysis of the politics of such an arrogant abrogation of sovereignty. Only USA citizens could consider this behaviour acceptable.

First the good: Production values are high and the locations innovative. Camerawork is ok to good. Editing is good. Sound is good. Score is good. The actor playing the governor is ok, as is the actor playing his wife. The actor playing the American singer's father is also ok. The Swedish characters actors seem ok to good so far--only seen one episode, but so many things stuck out as wrong that I'd to stop and write this.

Now the bad to not so good: The actor playing the American singer is perhaps the most vanilla (and faux) punk rocker in history, and his acting is TERRIBLE. Tbf, he may be an otherwise ok actor, but it's clear from his choices he shouldn't have been cast in this role. And to be even more fair, this could be the director's fault for letting him play the scenes the way he did. The actress who plays the governor's daughter is cookie-cutter one dimensional and, like the American singer actor, her acting is also forced and unbelievable. This wouldn't be so bad if they had chemistry, but there's no chemistry between the two of them at all. They not only don't look like they're interested in each other, they don't even look like they're interested in the opposite sex. (Speaking figuratively here--there are many talented actors who can pull off heterosexual attraction but who are not actually heterosexual.)

Got news for these Swedes: Even the most racist right-wing white supremacist American politician (which the governor character is not) wouldn't be seen having anyone close to him that looks like a white supremacist, as the bald headed goatee'd guy on stage behind the governor does. That just wouldn't ever happen. Ever. This isn't a comment about his acting because I've not seen him do anything yet, and it may not be a comment about casting either; as a simple shave, or a mustache alone with no goatee would've probably done the trick.

Perhaps the director wasn't going for realism, but was rather attempting camp and misguided cliché ("misguided", because pure cliché would've been a vast improvement), in which case he's succeeded. Or maybe his own biases made him make the choices he did. Still, the actors should have probably helped him not to make so many simple mistakes on so many important details.

I started watching this show, based on the imdb rating at the time, was 6.6/10.

The show is a mixup, collaboration between several countries. This is usually a warning flag.

Most of the charracters are wafer thin stereotypes, without any trace of substance or back story.

Things happened on screen without any form of credability, it just didn't make any sense. Real people would never act in a way that the charracters did.

Form a cineastic perspective, it was like "Wow, I have found som cool visual effects in my editing software", only problem is that it doesn't help the story telling at all.

I gave up after 17 minutes into the first episode, this one is just bad.

I'd twigged who the murderer was by halfway through episode four but couldn't be absolutely sure because I couldn't work out the motive. When it came, I was pretty stunned and didn't believe in the explanation offered.

During the first three episodes I'd had this feeling that one particular person was the actual murderer but it just didn't sit right and the programme was making it pretty clear that they weren't. That could have been a red herring but it wasn't a conventional one so I discounted those thoughts. By episode four however the miscreant was clear.

There was a bit of Sweden is good and the States are bad about the series. It certainly showed the ugliness of American politics and politicians as well as public discourse. That's not an exageration though, but the Swedish police were portrayed in an overly sympathetic light which they don't deserve particularly.

The series pulled no punches in places but it was uneven overall.

Worth a watch but not utterly compelling.