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 3 & 4

The story moves along at quite a pace in these episodes. We’re learning a lot but still feeling pretty far from a resolution. What we don’t end up with is a long list of silly red herrings, which The Bridge and The Killing were famous for, and that is absolutely fine by me. The focus remains on the victims and how the unforgivable events at the Valhalla Boys Home connect them.

The missing woman Brynja is the body discovered murdered in the basement. She is given a glowing character reference by Hakon, the local police officer, as a lovely old lady. But the woman working in the town archives says quite the opposite – that Brynja worked in a nursing home subsequently to her time at Valhalla and was accused of neglect.

As Kata sits in the most picturesque petrol station you could ever imagine, surrounded by amazing snow-capped mountains, tech expert Erlingur takes a break from the endless CCTV work of this crime and sends her the video we’ve all been waiting for; the one recovered from Kari’s phone. It’s just as bad as we’d suspected – it shows a young girl being raped by a gang of teenage boys. How is her seemingly adorable chubby-cheeked son involved?

The files on the Valhalla home have been taken from the archive by the Ministry of Justice where, years ago, they compiled a report on all of Iceland’s children’s homes. Petur is the State Prosecutor, who pops up to defend the indefensible. The report is suspiciously short, marking the home as “exemplary” despite only four of the 12 boys being quoted. Petur says there’s nothing suspicious about this as the home was only open from 1986 to 1988, and Kata reacts angrily, overwhelmed by this obvious cover-up and by what’s going on with Kari. She’s given several serious dressing downs by Helga, who must have now realised that Kata her loose cannon.

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'Apple Tree Yard'

Spoiler warning: this is a full review of Apple Tree Yard so if you’re spoiler conscious, please look away now!
Apple Tree Yard is an eye-catching thriller, adapted from the novel of the same name by Louise Doughty about Dr Yvonne Carmichael (award-winning Emily Watson) and dashing Mark Costley (Ben Chaplin). The pair meet by chance at the Houses of Parliament. She’s there to give a talk on her work in genetics. Why he’s there is never really explained. He bats his eyelashes at her and invites her to tour the secret chapel. That’s the magic words as within about 5 minutes of meeting they’re having sex! This is the very definition of a whirlwind romance.
This secret romance is a big deal to Yvonne. It’s all a bit grimy and sordid, but very exciting. She falls head over heels for a man she knows nothing about. It’s sort of a way to get her own back on her dodgy husband Gary (played by Mark Bonnar, an actor who seems to be in literally everything), but mainly to feel like an interesting and attractive middle-aged woman. I’d argue it’s the affair, not her Mr X as a person, that makes her feel good. It’s what it represents – the fight against aging and slowing down the inevitable invisibility as a desirable sexual woman. All this comes hot on the heels of her about to become a grandmother, and that’s surely no accident.
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'Inside Porton Down' – On the Box

Well that was a deeply disturbing hour of television.
BBC’s amiable Rent-a-Doc Michael Mosley was given unprecedented access to the UK’s most secret and controversial weapons facility. Porton Down in Wiltshire was established in WWI as a response to the gas attacks theĀ Germans launched in the trenches. Scientists based there had to work very quickly to develop gas masks for the troops and began testing ways to launch similar gas attacks against the Germans. Because the best defence is a good offence, and a cataclysmic scaling up of hostilities always ends well.
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