Walter Presents is going all Warsaw, with a season of Polish dramas for the summer months, starting with this fast-paced legal drama starring Magdalena Cielecka as feisty Joanna Chylka – a heavy metal loving lawyer, undefeated in the court room and uncompromising in her attitude and ambition.
If you want to avoid all spoilers, stop reading now.
She is contacted by an old friend whose three-year old daughter has gone missing from their remote mansion, where she lives with her husband. Joanna drops everything and drives her BMW like a maniac across Poland – with her rookie trainee, Kordian Orynski (who she insists on calling Zordon, for some reason) in tow – to assist and represent her friend. Predictably enough for a crime drama, with no evidence to speak of, the police suspect the parents of having killed the child and promptly arrest them in front of the TV cameras.
The series – known as ‘Chylka’ in Poland, and confusingly referred to on IMDB as ‘The Disappearance’ – has been around for four seasons, starting in 2018. It is based on a novel by Remigiusz Mróz, a Polish author who – according to Wikipedia – has written 40 novels since 2013. That’s five books a year, which seems extraordinarily prolific. None have been translated into English.
Cielecka is a hugely respected actor in Poland, where she’s won various awards. She’s clearly a very capable actor. But her character – Chylka – will polarise opinion. I must confess that I found her irritating and egotistical in the extreme; but others might consider her forthright and gutsy. I’m all for strong female characters, but any character – regardless of gender – has to engage the viewer. I found Chylka very hard to connect with and believe in. I had far more empathy towards Kordian, who is mercilessly bullied, verbally abused and relentlessly belittled by his new boss. I suspect most of us would have walked out on our first day and left her to her Iron Maiden back catalogue; but this is televisionland, so poor Kordian trots behind like a mistreated puppy whilst Chylka struts about in her designer outfits.
The storyline is interesting, though. Missing child cases are not an uncommon playground for crime writers, of course – think ‘Broadchurch’, ‘The Bay’ and ‘The Missing’ for starters. It’s too early to say if this series will reach the heights of those shows, but there are a few pointers in the opening episode – such as the odd boatman, Antoni Ekiel – what suggest a myriad of red herrings and misdirects await.
Much depends on how you warm to Chylka in determining whether this series is for you or not – she’s a bit of a Marmite character. And because she is very much the driving force, her larger-than-life persona is the key feature of the drama. But check out the opening episode when it arrives via All 4 and make up your own mind.
Walter Presents: ‘The Defence’ will be available as a box set on All 4 from 4th June 2021.
