This series actually dates back to 2016 and was originally shown on Netflix. But it’s now available for free from the good folks at Walter Presents. And good on them for making it available to everyone.
If you want to avoid spoilers for ‘Bordertown', stop reading this article now.
Kari Sorjonen (Ville Virtanen) is a talented police detective who, following his wife’s illness, decides to move his family to a quiet Finnish town near the Russian border for a more peaceful and less stressful life. But things don’t necessarily work out that way, as he soon finds himself embroiled in the search for the people responsible for a number of deaths.
This is very much a character-driven series, and Kari is undoubtedly the main draw. He’s described as a Finnish Sherlock Holmes, and that stems from his extraordinary ability to deduce remarkable details from what appear to be innocuous trivia. There’s even a touch of the Professor T about him, as he too struggles with social situations and interaction – but give him a mystery to solve, and he’s like a bloodhound. However, his methods are anything but orthodox, and his new colleagues are struggling to come to terms with his idiosyncratic ways.
The series is very bleak – there’s a greyness, an unhealthy pallor, to the way it looks. And the soundtrack is almost melancholy. Don’t expect much in the way of belly-laughs, because this is dark.
The opening episode is the first of a three-part story entitled “A Doll’s House” that involves child prostitution across the border in Russian. Firstly, the dead body of a young woman is found washed up on the shoreline. And the following day, Katia, an attractive young Russian woman who has found herself caught up in the sex-trade, is driven over to Finland where a car-dealer called Esa is holding her prisoner. But Esa, on the face of it, is a respected family-man with a daughter with a serious medical condition – so doing something like this seems out of character.
Katia’s mother, Lena (Anu Sinisalo), has some serious Russian connections and works for the FSB (the Russian internal security and counterintelligence service), and she takes it upon herself to go all Liam Neeson and track her daughter’s journey. But when she eventually catches up with Esa, he’s been killed, and her daughter is missing.
This is a very good series. Yes, it’s dark and brooding – and a little bit slow at times, it must be said. But the storyline is intriguing, the acting very impressive – particularly Virtanen – and the script is superb. There are quite a few episodes to get through, but it’s worth putting in the effort. Nice one, Walter Presents!
Walter Presents: ‘Bordertown' is available to stream as a full boxset on C4 Streaming now.
