Walter Presents do occasionally venture into Eastern Europe for their dramas, and they’ve headed east again for this Polish thriller.
If you want to avoid all spoilers, stop reading this article now.
Starring Julian Swiezewski as Commissioner Jan Góra (known as Manjaro) as the officer in charge of investigating a strange chain of events occurring in Warsaw, this is a very tense and dark thriller.
Right from the get-go, we see Manjaro in jail being surrounded by inmates shouting “pig, pig, pig” in the most intimidating and threatening manner. And immediately after that we cut to a scene where a young woman is brutally beaten with a hammer. If you prefer your dramas on the cozy side, look away now, because one thing ‘Crusade' isn’t is cozy!
When the woman’s body is discovered, it is minus a vital component – her head. But forensic examination reveals something even more strange – that the victim was partially eaten by her killer. Manjaro and his sidekick, Ludwik Bonczyk (who also has a nickname and is known as Louisiana), discover that their killer with cannibal tendencies is on a ferry to Estonia, so they are helicoptered onto the ferry before it can dock in Tallinn.
Having been captured, their cannibal reveals himself to be a quiet loner of a man who seems to belong to the Hannibal Lecter school of psychopaths, and he manages to get under the skin of Manjaro – touching a nerve when he talks about what he’d like to do to the prosecutor, Dorota Makomaska, who happens to be Manjaro’s ex-girlfriend. Manjaro loses his cool and attacks him whilst in custody and is arrested himself for assault. But the killer also reveals that this murder is part of wider scope of anti-establishment actions by a radical social revolutionary group – and sure enough, future episodes reveal a range of kidnappings, terrorist incidents and further murders, often of high-profile individuals, by this group.
There is no getting away from the fact that ‘Crusade' (known as Krucjata in its original Polish) is hard work. For a start it’s 13 episodes long – so that’s quite a commitment. There’s little in the way of light relief – it’s full on, dark and foreboding throughout. And it certainly won’t please the Warsaw Tourist Office or the anti-smoking lobby (Manjaro and his crew chain smoke throughout). But it is well-written and scripted. I don’t think it’s taken from a novel, but it has that feel – the characters are earthy and well-rounded.
This series won’t be for everyone. If you prefer your crime thrillers at the fluffier end of the spectrum, you’d find this show way too bleak. But if you enjoy gritty, urban thrillers, and are prepared to commit for the long haul, this might well turn out to be very rewarding.
Walter Presents: ‘Crusade' is available as a boxset on C4 Streaming now.
