A welcome return to Chief Inspector Antti Hautalehto (Mikko Leppilampi) and his team in this endearing Finnish thriller set in the small town of Porvoo, about 50km to the east of Helsinki.
If you want to avoid all spoilers, stop reading this article now.
Hautalehto is called away from a 60th birthday party after the police receive a call about a body literally boiling to death in a hot tub. The victim is Oskari Broman, a retired psychiatrist at a nearby hospital – a man with, it appears, a reputation for inappropriate behaviour. Therefore, the list of potential suspects is long. A further investigation of the crime scene suggests restraints – possibly handcuffs – were used to secure the victim to the handles on the side of the hot tub, preventing his escape.
Then the Chief Inspector receives an anonymous letter from someone claiming to have perpetrated the murder, and sharing details about the circumstances of the death that only the killer could know – and hinting that the death of the retired psychiatrist might just be the first of many. And sure enough, a second corpse is found in an open grave.
Meanwhile, Suvi Vettenranta is being released from prison and goes to visit her son, despite the fact that the boy’s father has a restraining order in place on her preventing her from visiting their flat. She is promptly re-arrested and taken to the police station, where she asks to see Hautalehto, who was one of the few who believed in at the time of her trial (she was found guilty of forging art works). She asks him to be her probation officer. He refuses, but asks his wife, who is a doctor, to take a look at her, as he’s worried that she might be suicidal.
The series is based on books by Christian Rönnbacka, a writer who has written 12 books in the series to date. And as I always say when TV shows are adaptations of existing novels, it makes for more rounded and believable characters – and that’s certainly the case here. There’s a lovely humorous touch to the writing, and all the characters – particularly Hautalehto’s fellow officers – are gifted some wonderfully witty lines.
The camerawork is also very worthy of mention. The use of drones for giving us an aerial view of landscapes has transformed our viewing pleasure, and that technique has been used here quite extensively over the glorious Finnish countryside.
This is a very classy, very watchable series. You don’t have to have seen Season 1, but it might be worth doing to know the full backstory. The acting is excellent, the script flows naturally and is entirely believable – particularly the banter between the officers. Definitely recommended.
Walter Presents: ‘Freezing Embrace' Season 2 is available to watch on Walter Presents via C4 Streaming.
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