To address the major flaw I have to include spoilers. The case centres around the abduction of a five-year-old girl who is taken from her parents whilst at a large public event. I will hopefully demonstrate that with a couple of basic pieces of reasoning and a couple of pieces of readily available information, the police could have, and should have, solved this one within a matter of hours/days (not nine years).
Abducting a child in front of hundreds of potential witnesses suggests some basic possibilities: either the child already knew the abductor (and hence trusted them); the abductor was female (and hence raised less suspicion); or a combination of those two factors.
Combine this basic reasoning with the background info on the parents: stay-at-home dad, mother is employed as a fertility doctor helping couples who can't conceive a child. Any lightbulbs flashing?
What type of woman might abduct a child? A woman who is desperate to have a child of their own but can't conceive? Hmm. Might that be a possible lead? How about investigating any patients of the mother (who failed to conceive) and asking them if they were present at the relevant time/location of the abduction?
A decent whodunnit would have addressed this obvious line of enquiry right at the start, perhaps misleading the viewer to discount it in favour of some other theory.
Instead, the viewer is meant to believe that an obsessed journalist, a dedicated detective and the two parents, all failed, over a period of nine years, to piece together the above 'clues'.
What partially saves 'The Snow Girl' is that it isn't really a whodunnit - at least, not in the traditional sense. It is also a drama centering around sexual abuse. The main character, Miren, played by Milena Smit, is a tramautised victim of a horrific attack, and we follow her, often moving, attempt to cope with the after effects.
If this story had been combined with a better handling of the detective case, this series could have been great - as it is, it's merely okay.
Abducting a child in front of hundreds of potential witnesses suggests some basic possibilities: either the child already knew the abductor (and hence trusted them); the abductor was female (and hence raised less suspicion); or a combination of those two factors.
Combine this basic reasoning with the background info on the parents: stay-at-home dad, mother is employed as a fertility doctor helping couples who can't conceive a child. Any lightbulbs flashing?
What type of woman might abduct a child? A woman who is desperate to have a child of their own but can't conceive? Hmm. Might that be a possible lead? How about investigating any patients of the mother (who failed to conceive) and asking them if they were present at the relevant time/location of the abduction?
A decent whodunnit would have addressed this obvious line of enquiry right at the start, perhaps misleading the viewer to discount it in favour of some other theory.
Instead, the viewer is meant to believe that an obsessed journalist, a dedicated detective and the two parents, all failed, over a period of nine years, to piece together the above 'clues'.
What partially saves 'The Snow Girl' is that it isn't really a whodunnit - at least, not in the traditional sense. It is also a drama centering around sexual abuse. The main character, Miren, played by Milena Smit, is a tramautised victim of a horrific attack, and we follow her, often moving, attempt to cope with the after effects.
If this story had been combined with a better handling of the detective case, this series could have been great - as it is, it's merely okay.