Bordertown

Watching Season 1 of this Finnish detective series was a wonderful breath of fresh air. Intelligent and progressive characters, story lines, cinematography and script; what a pleasure.

Season 2 however is quite disappointing, the teenage daughters of two of the main detectives are involved in far too many hectic violent cases, even though they had had already been involved in traumatic violent cases in the first series. This is far too unrealistic, unlikely and unnecessary. In addition, although the two detectives move heaven and earth to save their children, the teenage daughters demonstrate no gratitude or love, only anger, and become extremely frustrating to watch. Is this a crime/police series or a teen drama. I can only wonder what happened to the intelligent and thoughtful story lines of the previous series.

Firstly, I don't write reviews unless I've watched the whole show or series. I watch a lot of foreign content and loved this series. Whilst I agree with one reviewer who criticised the show for wrapping up episodes a little too quickly, thus making the conclusion a tad hard to understand, this really affected only 1 or 2 episodes. Overall, the stories are well thought out, the acting is good and the scenery superb.

I liked the way the characters were developed and found myself invested in their personalities and lives. It's not just a cop show - you experience both the professional and private relationships of Kari, his family members and his work alliances. And whilst the stories do stand alone, it's best to watch the series in sequence to fully appreciate and understand the interrelationships that develop.

I believe a lot of thought went into the casting of the series. Ville Virtanen as the lead character Kari Sorjonen is superb - as well as being a nice bit of eye candy for we ladies. Matleena Kuusniemi, who plays Kari's wife Paulina, is just delightful and I cannot imagine anyone better for that role. Olivia Ainali, who plays their daughter Janina, looks like she could be their offspring and plays her role as a young adolescent, coping with all the complexities of that age group and peer pressures, very convincingly.

I'm hoping for a second series. Nine out of ten from me.

I started watching season two and was IMMEDIATELY disappointed in your horribly dubbed English audio. Luckily I came to the reviews. You can go to your options to change the audio to the Finnish (original) language! Keep the subtitles in whatever language you need. Do yourself a favor and don't watch the series the "Netflix" way. It loses the quality. You need the original actor's voices. Something gets lost without their tone. This is such a great show. Now I haven't watched the second season yet, but I loved the first

A juggernaut of unfolding story lines, relationships and cinematography. Excellent script with a series of independent stories that the main characters develop their ongoing stories and provide their back stories with every subsequent episode. This series is appropriately rated MA with full female and male nudity so if that offends you look elsewhere. If reading subtitles are a issue then this isn't the series for you either.

But if you enjoy a suspense building drama crime series with excellent cinematography and excellent use of music to build tension and horror then don't pass this series up. 9 out of 10 for me.

It's a compelling crime drama that I found quickly addictive. The character development is well done, and there's a nice mix of suspense and twists. My only critique is the dubbing is awful. Luckily I saw the advice of another reviewer to change the audio to FInnish and turn on English subtitles. This allows you hear the proper tone of the actors.