Fifteen year old friends Philip and Henning meet in a hut in a remote forest and things start to get intimate between them
then they are interrupted when four men drive up. These men intend to kill a fifth man they have in the boot of their car. One of the group is a police informer and he gives a pistol to the 'victim'; this man then shoots all four of the men who brought him there. He then heads to the hut and confronts Philip; just as he is about to shoot him Henning hits him with a frying pan and the boys escape. Philip wants to tell his foster mother, Helen Sikkeland a local police chief, but Henning persuades him to keep quiet as he doesn't want anybody knowing what they were doing there.
Without any witness reports the police assume that, as the victims were all members of a biker gang, it must have been a rival gang behind the killings. The gangs assume the same and the violence escalates. Meanwhile we learn more about the real killer; most notably that he is a senior police officer with a Special Forces background willing to kill anybody who could expose him.
This Norwegian crime drama might be a little far-fetched at times, notable as it reaches its somewhat melodramatic conclusion, but it is gripping from start to finish. The fact that the identity of the killer is known from the start doesn't detract from the story as our knowledge about him makes him more menacing. The cast does a fine job; most notably Anneke von der Lippe as Helen and Axel Bøyum and Odin Waage as Philip and Henning. They make their characters believable and sympathetic. There are quite a few scenes that may disturb some viewers; these include the murder of a teenage girl and a man having his tattoos removed with an iron. Away from the central mystery there is some family drama; this doesn't feel too tagged on as it explains some of the characters' actions. Overall I'd definitely recommend this to fans of Scandinavian drama; if you've yet to watch any others this would be a decent entry as, at only six episodes, it is one of the shorter ones.
These comments are based on watching the series in Norwegian with English subtitles.
Without any witness reports the police assume that, as the victims were all members of a biker gang, it must have been a rival gang behind the killings. The gangs assume the same and the violence escalates. Meanwhile we learn more about the real killer; most notably that he is a senior police officer with a Special Forces background willing to kill anybody who could expose him.
This Norwegian crime drama might be a little far-fetched at times, notable as it reaches its somewhat melodramatic conclusion, but it is gripping from start to finish. The fact that the identity of the killer is known from the start doesn't detract from the story as our knowledge about him makes him more menacing. The cast does a fine job; most notably Anneke von der Lippe as Helen and Axel Bøyum and Odin Waage as Philip and Henning. They make their characters believable and sympathetic. There are quite a few scenes that may disturb some viewers; these include the murder of a teenage girl and a man having his tattoos removed with an iron. Away from the central mystery there is some family drama; this doesn't feel too tagged on as it explains some of the characters' actions. Overall I'd definitely recommend this to fans of Scandinavian drama; if you've yet to watch any others this would be a decent entry as, at only six episodes, it is one of the shorter ones.
These comments are based on watching the series in Norwegian with English subtitles.