The latest Nordic series to be picked up across the fjords in the UK is Jordskott, the creepy crime thriller that’s been holding Swedes in its grip.
Being haunted by events in one’s past isn’t the purview of just male detectives such as Sebastian Bergman and Kurt Wallander. The life of Eva Thörnblad (Moa Gammel, Irene Huss, Annika Bengtzon: Crime Reporter, Beck), a negotiator for the Stockholm Police special forces unit, has been darkened by a tragedy, too.
Her young daughter, Josefine, vanished. Drowned, the authorities said. But Eva knows in her heart that her child was abducted from the lakeside spot in the Silverhöjd forest where she’d been playing, just yards away from where the two were about to picnic. That was seven years ago, and Eva has been trying to cope with her grief ever since.
The death of her father, Johan, a local bigwig, has brought Eva back to Silverhöjd, and with her return come the flood of memories about that fateful day and the chance to delve deeper into the mystery of her daughter’s disappearance.
That a young boy has recently gone missing from the same forest cannot be a coincidence. Nor can the strange and sometimes deadly happenings in Silverhöjd.
As Eva is drawn into the investigation being conducted by Göran Wass (Göran Ragnerstam, Arn: The Knight Templar), a detective from Sweden’s National Bureau of Investigations, and Tom Aronsson (Richard Forsgren, Arne Dahl), the local investigator, she learns that there are dark and dangerous forces at work all around her.
Whether Jordskott becomes a worldwide sensation at the level of The Bridge, The Killing, and The Returned (the originals, not the remakes) remains to be seen. To date, Palladium Fiction’s 10-episode production for Sweden’s SVT has been picked up by Finland’s YLE, Iceland’s RUV, Norway’s TV2, and the UK’s ITV Encore channels.
Like those titles, Jordskott is an utterly riveting watch. (This, after having seen just the first four episodes.) Its complex and intricate storyline weaves characters who are and aren’t what they appear to be with freaky and often fatal goings-on in and around the forest — the ominous setting that plays as much of a role as the actors do (and makes one wonder how maternal Mother Nature really is). Then there’s the slow reveal, which, hopefully, will seamlessly tie everything together in a thrilling finale.
Also featuring in Jorskott are actors that should be familiar to Euro TV fans, including Peter Andersson (Johan Falk) as Gustav Borén, Johan’s business partner; Lia Boysen (Wallander) as Gerda Gunnarsson, Johan’s secretary; Ann Petrén (The Eagle) as Chief of Police Martina Sigvardsson; Ville Virtanen (Nymphs) as the mysterious Harry Storm; and Johannes Brost (Maria Wern) as Pekka Koljonen, a doctor at the local hospital.
The premiere date for Jordskott on ITV Encore has not been announced yet, so stay tuned. Ditto for news about whether a US broadcast/cable/streaming channel picks up the Nordic thriller.
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