There are some really interesting and engaging ideas in this Nordic noir show, about an attempted to thwart what seems to be an Islamic terrorism plot to bomb Helsinki. Best of what follows is the details of the recruiting of lost and disgruntled young Muslim women to be used as potential bombers, decoys, etc, a storyline that is mostly handled with some sophistication and nuance. Sadly the same can't be said of the three lead characters: the suspected terrorist is the best of them but still over-relies on flashbacks to explain her actions and is unable to convey the complex emotions of her actions. The main male lead, then, is the absolutely stereotypical hard-bitten cop, facing into a divorce (his wife is, of course, sleeping with his boss) and insensitive to his daughter, colleagues and all around him. And the lead female cop, around whom the whole show revolves, is literally a cipher, a kid rescued from an unexplained distaste and raised by her boss/handler as a kind of secret weapon, swapping identities so often in her various missions that she no longer really knows who she is (and we're close to not caring). At one point she's shot almost point blank in the head but wakes up some minutes later just in time to defuse a massive terrorist bomb that would have wiped out half the block. If her heroism is paper-thin, almost robotic, worse are the security protocols of the terrorists who can't tell when someone is dead and who have no problem leaving someone who might not be in a room with a ticking bomb while they drive off to their next fiendish rendezvous.
What makes this show just about watchable are the human stories of the immigrants, the refugees, those seeking political asylum. But one gets the feeling that, though the story depends on them, the producers are really not all that interested and would rather make a high octane thriller about characters we don't need to think about because they are always so obvious and predictable in their actions. It's an odd misunderstanding of what makes a thriller really thrilling (believable characters) but all too common in the era of box-sets and Netflix multi-series. Will there be a season 2? Almost certainly: the ludicrously obvious hook is there in the last couple of minutes when the lead female's occasional boyfriend is heard plotting on the phone with unknown persons against her (more terrorist intrigue?); will I be watching it? Only if I forget how disappointing season one turned out to be.
What makes this show just about watchable are the human stories of the immigrants, the refugees, those seeking political asylum. But one gets the feeling that, though the story depends on them, the producers are really not all that interested and would rather make a high octane thriller about characters we don't need to think about because they are always so obvious and predictable in their actions. It's an odd misunderstanding of what makes a thriller really thrilling (believable characters) but all too common in the era of box-sets and Netflix multi-series. Will there be a season 2? Almost certainly: the ludicrously obvious hook is there in the last couple of minutes when the lead female's occasional boyfriend is heard plotting on the phone with unknown persons against her (more terrorist intrigue?); will I be watching it? Only if I forget how disappointing season one turned out to be.