If you're partial to a top ten book, then the name might ring a bell as this drama of the same name draws largely from the bestselling book by M T Edvardsson, telling the often unsavoury tale of an average (well, almost) Swedish family from the town of Lund, where most of the filming took place, with occasional jaunts to Stockholm.
And I can almost already hear you salivating at the thought of another finely crafted Scandinavian thriller with grisly undertones. Well mostly, you would be right, but this shies away from much of the thriller aspects, preferring to tell a story of a murder and then slowly drops hints as it goes along, allowing the viewer to revel in their position as sleuth, rather than bombard the viewer with overt bloodletting. The violence is quite minimal, but the areas the story delves into are uncomfortable to watch at times, gnawing at your moral marrow.
Probably longer than it should be, the exposition is sometimes unecessary and the final nail in the coffin of the whole thing comes a little too conveniently, hurried as it is by the courtroom conclusion. Nonetheless, this remains edge-of-the-seat viewing and I binged all six episodes in one sitting, inarguably compulsive as it was. Those already familiar with the story may not get the same satisfaction as those coming in cold but the performances of characters already imagined will not disappoint the already fully clued-up reader.
Whilst just shy of 'Recommended' status, as there are other truly remarkable Scandinavian thriller series available, this is still an engaging, compelling story, delivered well, if a little laboured at times.