It’s happy dance time, my fellow Euro TV-philes. The long-ish wait for the stateside premiere of the third and final season of Dicte, the hugely popular Danish crime drama, is over.
It’s been nearly a year since Dicte: Season 2, a Best Danish TV Series nominee at last year’s Robert Festival, arrived in the US. Now the final season is here, Veteran’s Day is tomorrow, and many a Euro TV fan’s binge-watching schedule for the long weekend will include Dicte‘s new and last-ever ten episodes.
The first two are doozies.
It’s the day of Dicte (Iben Hjejle, Dag) and Bo’s (Dar Salim, Borgen) wedding, and one wonders if she’s going to pull a runaway bride on him before the minister gets to “I now pronounce you…”
Phew! Cue the confetti!
But then… THEN the unthinkable happens. And it gets worse.
Writers Dorte W. Høgh and Ida Maria Rydén took a risk in departing from the series’ tried and true — narratives revolving around crime reporter Dicte Svendsen helping investigator John Wagner (Lars Brygmann, Unit One) solve murders in and around Aarhus — by plunging viewers into a world of terrorists far from Denmark’s borders.
It was a brilliant move. Intense, deeply personal, and utterly devastating, Dicte’s thread in the first two-part story takes viewers on an emotional roller coaster ride of hope and despair as it delves into what love means and looks like in mundane and horrendous circumstances.
It’s distressing, so if you find yourself pausing the stream and stepping away from the screen for a few minutes to collect yourself, you wouldn’t be the only one to do so. (Ahem.)
By contrast (and to give viewers a chance to exhale from witnessing Dicte’s trauma), there’s Wagner’s typically uneventful life (save for an affair last season). It’s only challenged by the threat of an Ironman competition from his police partner Linda Bendtsen (Ditte Ylva Olsen, Mens Vi Lever) and the return to Aarhus of his ex-wife Nina Storm (new regular cast member Stine Stengade, Follow the Money). Until he learns of Dicte’s desperate situation…
If you’re thinking, “Wait a minute, this is rubbish. I want the Dicte that I know and love back,” no worries. There are plenty of murders for the reporter-turned-wannabe-novelist to get entangled in as a newshound and amateur sleuth again.
Not only that, you get Søren Malling (Borgen), who plays homicide investigator Tonni.
Returning to the series are Lærke Winther Andersen (Those Who Kill) as Dicte’s best friend Anne, Lars Ranthe (Badehotellet) as Dicte’s ex-husband and Anne’s baby daddy Thorsten, Emilie Kruse (Hold Me Tight) as Dicte’s daughter Rose, and Claus Riis Østergaard (The Protectors) as Steffen, the managing editor of local Aarhus newspaper Dagbladet.
Based on the crime novels by Elsebeth Egholm, Dicte is produced by Miso Film in co-operation with TV 2 Denmark, TV4, TV2 Norway, and webkasino Den Vestdanske Filmpulje, and in collaboration with YLE, RUV, LUMIÈRE in Benelux, and FreemantleMedia International.
Dicte: Season 3 is currently streaming in the US, exclusively on Netflix.
__________________
Add your comments on our Facebook and Twitter pages.
Share this post/page.