The Valhalla Murders – Episodes 5 & 6

Hang on tight, as the five minutes fly by in a flash; throughout these episodes the pacing and tension is a masterclass. You get the sense there’s no time to waste as we rush onwards to the conclusion. There’s a furious and physical confrontation between Kata and son Kari. She’s now desperate to know if he was involved with the rape of Telma. Despite this she still throws away his hoodie. Arnar wants to know if Kata is up to the job and if he can rely on her, but both of them are very distracted with major family drama brewing.

Petur the State Prosecutor shows up again, contrite and admitting his negligence to Kata in not investigating the boys home reports properly, saying he’ll do all he can to help. You get the distinct impression he’s only there because he’s worried about his reputation. I’m pretty sure he’d never repeat this publicly.

Tommi’s DNA proves what we suspected from episode 1 – he is the cold case skeleton, murdered 30 years ago. He never did manage to escape Valhalla. The search for Steinthor gears up. He’s gone to ground, even before the media name him as the prime suspect. You’d be surprised how many small silver Toyotas have had a prang and their front panel replaced with a red one. Maybe two-colour repair jobs are an Icelandic thing? When Kata does find the garage where the car is hidden, the place is clearly also being used as the murder’s base and there’s a lot of information to be found in there.

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The Valhalla Murders: Episodes 1 & 2 – BBC4

Velkominn guys! Welcome to Iceland, or indeed welcome back if you’re a fan of Trapped. Exciting Netflix news this week in that department as we look forward to a new sequel season titled Entrapped. This nice noir news also neatly heralds the start of The Valhalla Murders, similarly co-produced by Netflix, but available in the UK to watch on BBC4 in their classic Saturday night Scandi slot.

To stalwarts like me it feels familiar as we watch a man meet a grizzly end in an icy harbour, but this is not the backwoods of Trapped – this is the hustle bustle of modern Reykjavik with a cop who has attitude in spades and reminds me for all good reasons Sarah Lund (the original Scandi icon from The Killing). Our detective is the charming, resolute, and self-assured Katrin ‘Kata’ Gunnarsdottir (played by Nina Dogg Filippusdottir) who, at least in the first episode, looks comfortably in control both at home with her son Kari and ex-husband Egill and at work dealing with her colleagues and her journalist pals. How refreshing! A female detective with her life going well and a promotion due to her any day now.

But no! As the serial killer’s victims stack up, so Kata’s life begins to unravel. She’s snubbed at work in favour of Helga, who is made Head of Criminal Investigations. Kata has been in CI for 10 years and Helga is the new girl from Narcotics. She’s younger than Kata and far less experienced but is mates with the National Commissioner. Cue Kata, seething furiously, being ignored and talked over a series of offices. Magnus (played by Sigurdur Skulason), the guy older from the Metropolitan Police temporarily in charge, looks relieved to be stepping back and basically tells Kata to suck it up and get on with it. Will unravelling this knotty case be her stepping stone back to the limelight?

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'Unforgotten' Series 3 – ITV

SPOILER warning: this post deals with the final episode of Unforgotten Series 3. Do not read on unless you are up to date with both series 2 and 3. Catch up with all the box sets on ITV Hub now.
Unforgotten bowed out after a tremendous third series at the weekend. No one disagreed that it was an acting masterclass from start to finish, led by stalwarts Nicola Walker as DCI Cassie Stewart and Sanjeeve Bhaskar as DI Sunny Khan.  Since inception this show has attracted top quality British actors. This series was dominated by awesome performances particularly from Alex Jennings, James Fleet and Neil Morrissey (getting better and better in each drama part,although here he certainly need more screen time). But I wasn’t expecting such a split opinion on the ending, especially as this has become a truly beloved British drama. I wasn’t immediately on board back at their humble beginnings, and I admit I snarked at the first episode back in 2015. I was very happy to be proven wrong; the atmosphere wasn’t lacking in comparison to Scandi drama – it was just different.
Online, people seemed annoyed that there was no twist in the tale and that the final episode ran out of steam. Although, thinking about it, do any of the series so far provide a neat and satisfying ending? In series 2 because of the nature of the crime, the number of perpetrators and the time passed the police decide there was no value in pursing and prosecuting anyone. Was this what the audience wanted? Do we demand everything tied up neatly in a bow? Or do we realise if you strive for realism on TV in style and storyline that endings will inevitably be messy, just like in real life?
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'Unforgotten' – On the Box

Unforgotten is ITV’s new crime drama. From the off it’s very strange. For a start, it seems to be entirely well-lit. In some scenes there are zero spooky shadows and you can see everything. There’s even daylight! The investigating detectives are DCI Cassie Stuart and DS Sunny Khan. Not only do they seem well-adjusted, friendly and generally decent, but there’s zero sexual tension and no mention of alcohol or substance abuse. They might just be normal coppers doing a good job – an extremely rare sighting in drama or fiction of any kind. I especially like the way that episodes 1 and 2 haven’t shied away from how much methodical admin work goes in to a murder investigation. In fact, that’s the most mysterious thing about the show so far. Why is the Guv so keen to work a cold case full of dead ends? Nicola Walker‘s emotional stuff is a bit heavy-handed, but I’m sure it’ll all make sense when we find out about her brother/ sister/ husband/ mother who went missing when she was a child and left unresolved feelings that poor Jimmy’s case brings up.
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