Season one of this enjoyable thriller was a compelling collection of stories about a crime-fighting mother and daughter (and occasionally granddaughter) team from the island of Usedom in Germany, near the Polish border. As I explained in my review of the opening episode of the first series, it’s not really “Nordic” at all (and to further confuse matters it’s referred to on IMDB as Baltic Murders, or Der Usedom Crimi) but let’s gloss over that and focus on the show itself.
If you want to avoid all spoilers, stop reading this article now.
There’s more than a touch of Ann Cleeves about this show – Cleeves is the novelist behind both our very own ‘Shetland’ and ‘Vera’ series. This show has elements of both, with strong female characters, like ‘Vera’; and a rural island setting like ‘Shetland’. Also, like ‘Vera’, each episode runs for 90 minutes duration – something I really like as it gives the storyline plenty of scope to develop and take you on a mystery tour of red herrings and dead-ends.
The two main leads in the show – Karin (Katrin Sass) and Julia (Lisa Maria Potthof) – are both fine actors and deliver exemplary performances throughout.
Episode one kicks of with Julia’s husband, Stefan, worrying over the whereabouts of his wife. She claimed to be going to a spa hotel for a break; but when he doesn’t hear from her, he starts to worry about how honest she was being with him about her vacation. He ropes in his mother-in-law and between them they uncover that Julia has been pursuing a missing person as a private case. The missing individual is a young Nazi and biker who has been transporting supplies for his gang from Poland.
Karin and Stefan pursue various leads that take them to a hotel/brothel in Poland, where Julia was last seen. Meanwhile, a body washes up on the Usedom coast – albeit with bits missing – and new police chief, Ellen Norgaard (a Dane whose mother lived on Usedom) is brought in to investigate. Ellen’s introduction to the town got off to a shaky (quite literally) start when her mobile home was rammed and upturned by one of Karin’s bison. You don’t get that sort of plot line in ‘Vera’.
The show has a nice balance of light humour, such as the bison incident, and some very dark moments. This episode features the misfortunes of biker gangs, including all the violence and sexual predation that goes hand in hand with that culture. If you find that sort of thing difficult to watch, just be warned. But it’s not excessive or gratuitous.
The opening episode ends with a real shock – something I certainly didn’t see coming. Without wishing to give too much away, it makes me wonder in which direction the remainder of the season will go. We shall see.
If you enjoyed the first season, there’s no reason to expect you won’t find this one equally entertaining.
Walter Presents: ‘The Nordic Murders’ season 2 will premiere on More4 at 9pm on 9th July 2021. The full boxset of season two will be available via Walter Presents on All 4 after the first episode airs.
