Snöänglar

As this six-part Swedish series opens Nicole, a young deaf girl, returns home on Christmas Eve and wakes her mother. It soon becomes apparent that her five year old baby brother is missing. She calls the police. At first it is assumed he is with her taxi driving husband but when he returns it is clear that isn't the case. When the police return to the apartment husband Salle flees. The following two episodes show the events running up to the disappearences, focusing on this family, Alice and Maria, a postnatal nurse who had been concerned about the boy. Once back to the present various truths emerge.

This is not a cheerful series but it is well worth watching. The central mystery is gripping but it is much a character study as a whodunit... or more precisely a what-was-dun. The series really captures the feeling of cold with subdued tones and dark, sometimes a little too dark, scenes. The cast does a fine job making the varied characters believable and interesting. Without giving details I will say that the explanation does not seem obvious. Overall I'd recommend this to fans of grittier Euro-drama.

These comments are based on watching the series in Swedish with English subtitles.

It's quite realistic in the sense that so many families are struggling like this. Poor, drug abuse, mental health issues, etc. The one I feel most sorry for is Nicole!

None of the characters are very likeable but I think that's on purpose. Good acting and interesting story, even if a little predictable.

A very realistic series about a number of bad decisions in your life, unwilling criminals and innocent victims. The actors' and actresses' play is as usual in the Swedish, Danish films, outstanding. As much as we don't want to notice and acknowledge...life is more than black and white.

There have been many series about children who are missed, which is also the main event here. We follow a young couple with many challenges in everyday life who experience all parents' nightmares, their baby disappears. The series is good at unraveling both incidents in advance and the investigation that is launched. I get a little frustrated that some episodes were largely about prehistory after we are introduced to the disappearance. Maybe the series could have been shortened somewhat, and instead concentrated only on the disappearance? On the other hand, it is also about the difficult social conditions the main characters have, and other characters are also carefully presented. This provides a rich gallery of characters, and gives us viewers more hints about what may have happened. This makes the series exciting to follow. After watching this series, I think the creators have succeeded in creating an exciting series, with a dark backdrop that provides an insight into a gloomy everyday life and dysfunctional environments in which the main characters live their lives. The revelation about what happened is well made and in my opinion surprisingly good.

One of the best tv shows I've seen in years, Snow Angels (on UK's All-4 streaming service) is the 6-art account of the disappearance of an infant child and the sympathetic scrutiny of his shocking family life. A drug-addicted mother and a reformed addict father, who is heroically loyal to her, struggle to cope with the arrival of a second child into their hand-to-mouth existence. Meanwhile we follow the trials of a maternity care nurse whose job it is to make evaluations of the ability of new parents to cope. How will these two harrowing narratives intersect?

Snow Angels is a difficult but compelling watch, tender and sad, shocking and utterly involving. A series that goes where most others, for all their shock and gore and posturing, would fear to tread.

Highly recommended.