The Killing

Together with Dexter, one of the best crime series today. It has an interesting plot without any padding and a great build-up towards the end. The main asset I see in the two leads: the clever detective played by Mireille Enos (Emmy nomination) and especially her colleague with unconventional methods, who doesn't worry too much about regulations. He’s played by Joel Kinnaman, who joins the ranks of interesting European northerners (Stellan and Alexander Skarsgård, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) who have perfectly mastered the English language and its accent and found a place in Hollywood. Carry on Nordic lads, I’m rooting for you. PS: Please, do not compare this to Twin Peaks, this is a different concept, a different league, a different universe. PS2: After a riveting 2nd season, I'm giving it a full rating. (22/01/2012)

Two seasons in so far it’s a whodunit with a really excellent pair of investigators wrapped up in an overwrought script about a not particularly interesting case filled with uninteresting supporting characters played by not very good actors. The show shows great production limitations. It's overshadowed by its setting, rainy Seattle, but the pace of the filming and the finances didn't seem to allow for much running around exteriors, so we're constantly thrust into small apartments, cars, or glass-walled offices. It doesn't have very good makeup artists if they haven’t finished people’s tattoos, for example. The subplot about the election fight is terribly uninteresting and driven by really bad actors. And in general, we just spend a really pointless amount of time with all these characters, and yet really, aside from the issues surrounding the case, they don't have much reason to keep anyone on screen for several long hours. Ten years ago, it could have been one of the avatars of the rise of "quality TV" of the time because of its focus not only on the investigation itself, but also on everyone involved, especially the victim's family, and observing the days following the crime from so many perspectives. Moreover, by almost always having women behind the series and the individual episodes, the series promised a more sensitive approach to the whole situation. Which it did deliver, but unfortunately the direction afterwards was stilted, with no ideas or any exclusive character. But Holder and Linden keep me coming back for more seasons. (07/06/2021)

I would never have believed that I would like an American remake of a Scandinavian series more, but in this case, I did. The original Nordic crime drama The Killing is clearly better than the American The Killing in the first season, but the Americans take the reins in the later seasons. The psychology of the characters, especially the detective duo Linden & Holder, is brilliantly portrayed, with a chemistry between them that is hard to describe in words. There is no shortage of gloomy and chilling atmosphere, escalating tension, and unexpected twists. That's how I imagine a detective series whose every episode I will hungrily devour. (07/12/2020)