User Reviews

I've watched several Scandi dramas recently and noticed a common theme amongst most of them. Lead character is female, miserable, moody, terrible mother, terrible person, hate their new partners but get closer to them in the end. I'm thinking mainly of Deadwind, The Bridge, Grey Zone, The Valhalla Murders and probably The Killing (although I only saw the US version. Also there's usually a corrupt company in the middle of the story desperately trying to build some kind of 'project'. Stockholm Requiem doesn't follow all these but it does follow one unfortunate trend.. Immigrants are wonderful innocent victims and heroes while white people are corrupt or right wing terrorists. This has an opposite affect on their agenda, all it does is poke everyone to the point which they become sick of being lectured and accused. Let's have some reality, immigrants can be good and bad just as white people can be good and bad. But let's face it, when it comes to terrorist killings the vast majority are immigrant perpetrators. Anyway, this was mostly well acted and storylines original. But it really disturbed me how the main character was willing to let her partner spend years of time, effort, money, emotion and love bringing up somebody else's child.. And her doctor encouraged her to do it by not doing a DNA test. Told you they were terrible people.

The current fashion in TV investigative dramas is for slowly unfolding plots over which the detail of the investigators' lives are sprinkled, part embellishment, part subtle distraction. It's a formula, but it can work: see River, Broadchurch, True Detective (1), and many of the original Wallenders (forget the hammy Kenneth Branagh pretending to be grumpy and troubled when he's clearly enjoying the scenery and attention).

In this particular pretentiously titled Scandinavia Noir (a few more vowels wouldn't have hurt, would they?) the characters (excuse the pun) are all ridiculously two-dimensional, and the plot (such as it is) depends almost entirely on three major coincidences: 1, the central character female cop has an affair with a male character who later proves (as if we never saw it coming) to be a murderer, and who is himself murdered later in the season; 2, between these two events, this characters fathers a child by the female cop (so that her Swedish heart can break every time she looks upon the child and regrets her disloyalty and deceit; 3, her actual partner (the poor, deceived, cuckold) is himself also a suspect in yet another murder case (our heroine has a knack for picking murderers as lovers in the whole population of Sweden, or should that be the world?) And, of course, for added pathos, her partner never realises that his child is the offspring of another man, even when, after a single nosebleed, it turns out he is dying of leukemia as the plot line of all the various, baffling murders threatens to reach a crescendo. OTT? You could say that. Except the acting is so low-key and 'cool' that there's almost no build-up of pace at all.

So, lots of disconnected murders which, surprise surprise, all turn out to be connected after all. And, wouldn't you know it, the murderer is one of the police team (of four) that is investigating the cases. What are the odds? Even better than marrying/having an affair with a murderer (maybe two!) when you work in murder investigation, apparently.

Some nice photography and scenery, a cute rabbit, and some stunning apartments that I'd have thought would be out of the financial reach of the average homicide detective, cannot do much to raise the overall temperature of what is less a chilly drive in the snow-covered northern lands and more a decidedly lukewarm rehash of thriller cliches.

I love the whole 'Scandi-noir' genre and have pretty much scraped that barrel by now I should think. This one was a little different in that it focussed a lot more than usual on how seeing and working with these kinds of crimes actually affects the people that have to do so. The cumulative reactions of the leads to professional or home-life horror after horror was very believable, and affecting too. I'd say this show was up there with the best of the genre and the only thing stopping me giving it 10/10 was the slightly bad taste left by the killer in the over-arching story managing to get away with it all. (Or at least as far as we get to see - it's hinted that his conscience might get him yet.) I don't want to be a total grimness-monger, but it would have somehow fit better with the tone of the show if that had not ended quite so apparently well for him either. But if you like it dark, and Nordic - you'll struggle to do better than this.

Normally Scandinavian crime series are of high standard but lately I have some difficulties with them. This serie falls in that categorie. Although the effort is ok, it's meanly about an female police investigator joining a special division in Stockholm. Apparently she is not welcome for a non disclosed reason. So far she has no special skills beside her being a classical musician once being a member of the London philharmonic orchestra. So she's strangely introduced as higher educated then al of them which should explain the adversity. Strangely because normally a special branch is know for higher educations.

From that point on, they run into the first case of a kidnapped kid at Stockholm Central Train station. At that point the whole unit doesn't seems to function at al as a police unit. Every scene at the HQ is dripping of amateurism, no apparent leadership in the investigation, deliberate ignoring lines of inquiries, openly showing signs of tunnelvision. In effect causing more victims then necessary, which don't forces higher leadership to intervene. And that's beside all the personal issues. One officer has a wife suffering from post natal stress syndrome, while he is having an affair witha college at work. Which causing him so much sleep that he falls asleep on the workfloor. Another officers seems to have coronary symptoms which he tries to avoid having checked. She, herself seems to be reluctant in adopting a kid of her own, without consulting her relation at that point. Beside that she is using pot for whatever reason. All and all it's to much personal sjite and to little professional police bearing. Makes you question if they had intent to make a proper police series. It's not even an A for effort.

The theme song and opening credits are a definite 10 STARS but it is all down hill from there. This is the worst Nordic Noir or detective/crime series I have ever watched. It sucks you in with the style from the opening and you think I must be missing something because this doesn't make much sense. I even re-watched part of the first episode and started to realize how bad this show really is when you do pay attention.

These are the most inept detectives ever.

Fredrika Bergman is not a likable character as an investigator, spouse/lover or mother. She is not a good human being in any way. She is dishonest, disingenuous, self-serving, callous and not even a good detective although she gets credit all the time for pointing out things that seem rather obvious. She evokes no empathy and the character as flawed as she is still doesn't make me care about her at all. She has no ethics or moral compass of any kind. In fact, by the last couple of episodes I was hoping she and Alex would be taken out by the criminals. Yes, a character so awful you hope she is killed off.

Alex Recht (should have been called Whiner) is an even worse character. He's supposed to be the DCI equivalent but is the most leaderless person you will ever see in this role. He doesn't seem to have any idea where the investigations are going. He commands almost no respect and gives his "team" little direction. I have never seen a more disorganized investigative unit. They just stand around an electronic white board sliding pics around while doing little else. They do not work as a team and most of his instructions are disregarded by Fredrika most of all and Peder too. He is the most bland character in this type of series I have ever seen and NO it cannot be explained away just because this is Dark Nordic Noir. I've watched quite a lot of these and this is nothing like a character from Darkness, Wisting or Rebekka Martinson to name a few good ones. He is beyond callous to suspects and victims, does not communicate with anyone in his personal life or work, is always in crisis mode and so depressed I was hoping he would throw himself out a window.

Not only is the character dull but. Jonas Karlsson the actor brings absolutely nothing to the role. He just takes his glasses off about 6 times an episode and rubs his head in frustration and that sums up the extent of his acting. Liv Mjones is not better. Her character's flatness is not helped by her lack of acting.

The writer(s) have made this so confusing but think they can use a gimmick to make these two characters seem deep and philosophical. Through all the episodes there is this drawn out overused series of scenes where Alex is driving a cab and picks up Fredrika. We have to endure this unpleasing view from a CabCam. They drive around whining about how bad and sick the world is but they are hypocrites who are a much bigger part of the problem than solution. They are failures in their jobs. All of their scenes in the cab, not unlike many of the other conversations in this series, are like watching some really bad existential dry play go on and on and on whilte saying nothing.

Alexej Manvelov gives a good performance as usual and his character Peder is the only one that evokes any sympathy or seems the least bit real.

I was fine with the 2 -episode plots but after the writers show they can't handle this model they try to tie several plots together after the fact in the last 2 episodes which doesn't work. They try to engineer this grand finale based on a storyline they nor the viewer was even aware of. It's comes out of left field and comes off as laughable at best. Two of the three investigator's relationship partners are involved in the plot and third one decides to date a victim's mother. Coincidence to the ridiculous. One detective basically goes into gangland killing mode and I couldn't believe he was not charged with murder. I actually laughed during this scene because it was so over the top and the criminal deserved it, but he was only suspended from duty. Not believable at all.

Every character complains about how people get away with crimes and BOOHOO's about how nothing is being done but these detectives are nothing but stylish hypocrites. They are typical whiner generation characters who could be doing something to change things but instead they throw up their hands, take care of their own needs and stay depressed say the world is beating them down when they are just laying down.

Please don't waste your time. Just pull up the theme song on line, watch the terrific credits, listen to the music. I promise disappointment if you watch anything beyond this. Every bit of the potential of this series is squandered by idiotic writing. I consider Maria Wern and Detective Maria Kallio to be mediocre because the leads both have similar flaws as these characers but on a much smaller scale, but after watching STHLM REQUIEM those two Maria's seem much better somehow in comparison. If you make it to the end you will be PISAPPOINTED!