Like many in these pandemic times, I'm looking for distraction and entertainment, but not at the price of filling my brain with absolute junk.
Starting with the well-worn cliché of the cop reluctantly returning to the home town, where mysterious events from his past still haunt him, this one then adds in puritanical religious groups, rivalry between Turkish and Iraqi restaurant owners, a nymphomaniac female partner (with her own haunting past), oh and a diabolically clever local businessman who wants to - guess what - develop the local land against the wishes of the religious zealots.
So far, so familiar.
But what makes this 6-part series so risibly awful is that all these disparate plots are shoehorned together so ineptly that it's hard not to laugh when the imprisoned and tortured man in a shed (yes, there's one thrown in her for luck) after three episodes of sawing his ropes against a piece of wood at last manages to escape and run, only to get knocked down and killed by the business who is driving the only car for miles around and who doesn't see him because (bad guy that he is) he's busy getting a blow-job at the time.
'So bad it's good' is a phrase we hear too much these days. But whatever charms this had in Finnish for a Finnish audience (maybe enjoying the landscape, the repeated digs at religious cults etc), few of them have any significance for an international audience.
Apart from a terrific, moody performance by the male lead who exudes worry and existential grief in his every gesture and word, All the Sins has committed so many sins of its own (from the horrible, off-pitch breathy title track, to the endless sweeping drone shots of pine forests and lone, winding roads) that it's certainly a contender for the title of least original detective show of recent years. And that's even without the fact that the multiple murder victims are being - yawn - hanged upside and drained of their blood by the murderer. When you have to add that to the mix, folks, you know your plot is very probably already past the point of salvation.
Starting with the well-worn cliché of the cop reluctantly returning to the home town, where mysterious events from his past still haunt him, this one then adds in puritanical religious groups, rivalry between Turkish and Iraqi restaurant owners, a nymphomaniac female partner (with her own haunting past), oh and a diabolically clever local businessman who wants to - guess what - develop the local land against the wishes of the religious zealots.
So far, so familiar.
But what makes this 6-part series so risibly awful is that all these disparate plots are shoehorned together so ineptly that it's hard not to laugh when the imprisoned and tortured man in a shed (yes, there's one thrown in her for luck) after three episodes of sawing his ropes against a piece of wood at last manages to escape and run, only to get knocked down and killed by the business who is driving the only car for miles around and who doesn't see him because (bad guy that he is) he's busy getting a blow-job at the time.
'So bad it's good' is a phrase we hear too much these days. But whatever charms this had in Finnish for a Finnish audience (maybe enjoying the landscape, the repeated digs at religious cults etc), few of them have any significance for an international audience.
Apart from a terrific, moody performance by the male lead who exudes worry and existential grief in his every gesture and word, All the Sins has committed so many sins of its own (from the horrible, off-pitch breathy title track, to the endless sweeping drone shots of pine forests and lone, winding roads) that it's certainly a contender for the title of least original detective show of recent years. And that's even without the fact that the multiple murder victims are being - yawn - hanged upside and drained of their blood by the murderer. When you have to add that to the mix, folks, you know your plot is very probably already past the point of salvation.