Snöänglar

Sometimes almost too painful to watch, but this features an astonishing performance by Maria Rossing as Maria - I cannot find words to adequately describe it and don't want to issue spoilers. But the acting all round is just superb, and especial mention has to go to the young girl who plays Nicole. Best drama I have watched in ages.

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.

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.

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.

This is one of the few Scandinavian series when viewers can see that so-called native local people can also live in poverty and misery (usually this is visible when depicting post-1990 immigrants). The situations are both tragic and somber, and intertwining 3 cases and multiple characters provides additional value to the series. True, the potential wrongdoer as to the baby is somewhat revealed too soon (in spite of somewhat artificial distractions), but the real circumstances remain mystery up to the end. All the scenes are accentuated by harsh weather conditions and gray winter sky = climate is a strong supporting cast here.

The performances are also okay, with many faces not visible in every Swedish-Danish series :) Well, Eva Melander is a kind of star in Scandinavia, but Maria Rossing was a pleasant surprise, previously unknown to me.

Thus, Snöanglar is a solid series, yet not Innan vi dör or Bron/Broen, and with certain triviality in depicting police officers, particularly headstrong ones...