I am always happy to find some new twist in our favorite genre, given that there are so many familiar tropes and patterns. This is especially true of TV police procedurals, where both cast and plots tend to stick to such familiar ingredients as faithful sergeant, the difficult or incompetent or overly political chief, the feisty if misunderstood detective, the serial killer and the falsely accused.
So there is something to be said for a bold move within the familiar, and The Nordic Murders, a multi-season German production now on PBS Passport, PBS stations, has indeed done something different. One of its chief, if unofficial, investigators is a convicted murderer.
 |
| Karin, the murderer |
Now murderer as narrator has been around at least since Agatha Christie's Who Killed Roger Ackroyd. I even tried my hand at one with "The Writing Workshop," narrated by a frustrated mystery writer trying to improve his luck by eliminating unsympathetic editors. The Nordic Murders takes a different approach.
Karin Lossow (Karen Sass) was a prosecutor with the local police force when she impulsively shot her unfaithful husband using their daughter's police revolver. Eight years later at the start of the series, Karin is released from custody and returns to Usedom, a German island in the Baltic off the coast of Poland.
Her probation officer, many of her neighbors and certainly her daughter would much rather she take an apartment in some distant mainland town. Karin will have none of it. She intends resume to life in her fine old house and reconnect with her family, namely her daughter Julia (Lisa Marie Potthoff) and her granddaughter Sophie (Emma Bading).
Karin tells her grand daughter that she survived prison by helping and comforting others. To her daughter's understandable dismay, her mom intends to continue this good work on the outside. Given her mastery of German law and legal practices, Karin soon involves herself in the legal troubles of both criminal suspects and victims of crime. Worse yet, as far as the powers that be are concerned, she has a sharp eye for official incompetence, political grandstanding, and procedural errors. An awkward mom to say the least.
Naturally, with five seasons of The Nordic Murders, some rapprochement between mother and daughter is eventually in the cards, but the series makes quite good drama out of the process of reconciliation. It also, rather unusually, has three big female roles. Karin is the most interesting and the most complex, but her feisty, idealistic ,and impulsive
 |
| Julie, police commissioner |
Julia, a police commissioner is the most conventionally drawn. Conscientious and perceptive at work, if a bit chilly, her love for her nice husband and daughter have not kept her from a torrid romance with an attractive Polish police officer. This affair, I suspect, was devised to add interest to a character that is not as well drawn as her female relatives.
Still, big female roles are not to be sniffed at, and possibly because of them, The Nordic Murders relies less than usual on violent action, car chases and assaults. The writers also seem fond of gray areas, both moral and legal. Sometimes what looks like murder, turns out to be something else; sometimes murder results from an array of intolerable choices; sometimes the most likely perpetrator really is innocent and someone perfectly nice has done a dreadful thing.
 |
| Sophie, Julie's daughter |
The Nordic Murders' sparse dialogue, German with the occasional Polish (both subtitled in English) and rather subdued acting style represent a change from the snappy repartee and non stop action favored by most English language series. But the series has a good cast, well constructed plots, and an unfamiliar setting in one of the most contentious and long suffering regions of the planet. A kidnapping victim is stashed in an old WW2 bunker and desperate refugees huddle amidst sparse conifers, for history, political as well as personal, underlies this interesting series.
