Jana - Marked for Life

As always with Swedish police thriller productions the writing is lazy and technically wrong. Appalling acting and cringy. A series trying to be tuff and Hollywoody but falls flatter than an extras paycheck.

The scenery from the town if Norrköping is beautiful though, and the photos between scenes are excellent. The series has a dark image during the harsh Swedish winter, with dark scenery ivy snow in a mix.

The series is predictable and boring, flat characters and above all: the lead roll is extremely boring with total lack of acting. Is rather see Plan 9 from outer space than watch this travesty again.

Nonsensical plot, second rate production....what was with all the water at every scene change? Amateurish. Lost count of the holes in the story, more frequent and bigger than our local potholes.

Acting was often clunky and unnatural. My credulity was strained too many times;Jana should have been removed from any investigation early on as she was clearly a disturbed and damaged character. I blame myself for wasting so many hours hoping that it might get better.!

Not deserving of the category scandinoir; please, do not consider making series 2 or more!

There is only so much drivel a person can absorb in one lifetime!

I watched it all and more fool me.

Just the premisses we are expected to swallow are unbelievable. Chief prosecutors break the law, eminent psychiatrists prescribe illegal medicines, trainee prosecutors break into private and commercial properties. All this is against a backdrop of a Svengali figure training and controlling an army of Bene Gesserit-like fighting children.

One might say these kids were hidden in plain sight but their base is just about the most ridiculous one imaginable. Where would their food have come from in this industrial wasteland?

Contrived climaxes and discoveries abound. There's no actual detective work at all. Lucky coincidences lead to the next episode of ridiculousness. Horrifyingly, there's a semi cliffhanger at the end. We might be subjected to more of this nonsense.

Okay, this series has some major flaws. First, the way her adopted parents treat her traumatic childhood - I mean the level of ignorance displayed is a little hard to believe for highly educated, affluent people. Very surprising, given her adopted father's profession. I mean, no real effort given to find out why she was traumatized. I mean, come on..... Second, the treatment she received for her trauma. Why so secretive?

And, finally the biggest problem with the series and why I believe it lead to the many negative reviews. The series is just to short for the storyline being covered. I believe several of the mental leaps that you have to make and lack of fleshing out of the main character are due to it only being six episodes. Both a complex main character and storyline needed that.

So be prepared. If you can ready yourself for these, then you'll have a very enjoyable experience.

Had this been presented with a more sci-fi slant than it was, I might've found it easier to believe the lead character's strange and somewhat inexplicable actions through the series. Some of the dialogue is also quite stilted or unnatural, where Jana might give a better qualifying answer as to why she couldn't do something with her family at any time or other, her lack of this made her less likeable as a character and her motivations and the cohesiveness of her actions less questionable. Not really giving us any insight into the actual role of a prosecutor in the Swedish judicial system also reduces the believability of her actions throughout. It's not engaging enough to warrant further development because she wasn't likeable enough as a character. Her apartment is also far too fancy for a junior lawyer, regardless of her father's implied wealth and standing. The plot was somewhat far fetched too.