Really well written but...the politic part was the best for the rest why a guy who was guilty took the case really?
2 Reviews
Shorter, tighter and more engaging than the first series
bob the moo9 February 2013
After years of hearing about good The Killing was, I had started to take it for granted that this was being said simply so that you would know the person saying it was a BBC4 viewer and therefore smarter than you. As a result it took me a while to actually want to watch it for myself and, when I did, despite being overly long I thought it was very good and quite looked forward to the second season. I'm not sure why this second season has a significant reduction in episodes but just as I felt the first season was probably longer than it could bare, so I felt this reduction suited it very well. Unlike the first series, we don't follow the family of the victims and, although something is lost by doing this, more is added and it would have been hard to do in this case.
Instead the plot sees an Islamic fundamentalist killing those associated with a controversial and potentially hushed-up atrocity in Afghanistan. These murders serve the background for the return of Lund and also similar political connections and complications as we saw in the first series. The first few episodes took me a while to get into as we generally move to a whole new set of characters and it was a bit jarring to have so many new faces and also new plots; also the nature of the beast is that the plots develop slowly and increasingly come together as we move forward – so at first anything occurring outside of the main crime seems secondary or distracting. The shorter episode run minimizes this because it is not long before things are moving at pace and each thread started becoming interesting in its own right and also being drawn into the overall plot. It does this in a pretty satisfying and engaging way and it does deserve credit for not overly spoon-feeding the viewer – although there is always a "previously" at the start of each episode, this isn't a show that has lots of exposition dialogue to constantly explain what other dialogue means and what is happening right now.
While this is to its credit, it does of course mean that at times you need to go with it to catch up; being in Danish and subtitled into English doesn't help too much either because it is very easy to miss key information if you look away for even a line of dialogue. This isn't a big problem though and mostly the show is more engaging for requiring this attention. The one exception I make is the incidental music. Although it is associated with the show now, I still find some of the music distracting – particularly the chimes that play, because they are very close to the "you're near a clue" chimes that the video game LA Noire used. Otherwise the music and delivery is otherwise good and I still like the opening and closing sequences each week.
The cast are solidly good but by far the best is Gråbøl; her Lund is equally driven and broken and it makes for a great character – there is a lot of darkness in her and this is brought out well by a performance that is much more than the fuss over her jumpers suggests. At first I wasn't sure about Bro as Buch but it turns into a great performance as he gets his teeth into it; no glamour or pretence but it is better for it. Support is good from Birkkjær, Suurballe, Bjørnlund, Vedsegaard, Prætorius and others – few if any of them exist as just red-herrings, even if they are used for that as well.
Overall, although I think that the first series of Forbrydelsen was stronger as a whole, I think this second series benefited from being shorter and punchier. It doesn't walk you through it and it does need you to pay attention, but it rewards you doing so as it is a well paced and developed crime thriller that brings merges politics with the crime really well.
Instead the plot sees an Islamic fundamentalist killing those associated with a controversial and potentially hushed-up atrocity in Afghanistan. These murders serve the background for the return of Lund and also similar political connections and complications as we saw in the first series. The first few episodes took me a while to get into as we generally move to a whole new set of characters and it was a bit jarring to have so many new faces and also new plots; also the nature of the beast is that the plots develop slowly and increasingly come together as we move forward – so at first anything occurring outside of the main crime seems secondary or distracting. The shorter episode run minimizes this because it is not long before things are moving at pace and each thread started becoming interesting in its own right and also being drawn into the overall plot. It does this in a pretty satisfying and engaging way and it does deserve credit for not overly spoon-feeding the viewer – although there is always a "previously" at the start of each episode, this isn't a show that has lots of exposition dialogue to constantly explain what other dialogue means and what is happening right now.
While this is to its credit, it does of course mean that at times you need to go with it to catch up; being in Danish and subtitled into English doesn't help too much either because it is very easy to miss key information if you look away for even a line of dialogue. This isn't a big problem though and mostly the show is more engaging for requiring this attention. The one exception I make is the incidental music. Although it is associated with the show now, I still find some of the music distracting – particularly the chimes that play, because they are very close to the "you're near a clue" chimes that the video game LA Noire used. Otherwise the music and delivery is otherwise good and I still like the opening and closing sequences each week.
The cast are solidly good but by far the best is Gråbøl; her Lund is equally driven and broken and it makes for a great character – there is a lot of darkness in her and this is brought out well by a performance that is much more than the fuss over her jumpers suggests. At first I wasn't sure about Bro as Buch but it turns into a great performance as he gets his teeth into it; no glamour or pretence but it is better for it. Support is good from Birkkjær, Suurballe, Bjørnlund, Vedsegaard, Prætorius and others – few if any of them exist as just red-herrings, even if they are used for that as well.
Overall, although I think that the first series of Forbrydelsen was stronger as a whole, I think this second series benefited from being shorter and punchier. It doesn't walk you through it and it does need you to pay attention, but it rewards you doing so as it is a well paced and developed crime thriller that brings merges politics with the crime really well.
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