The Killing II - review

The Killing II started on BBC Four this week-end and I made sure I watched it. I missed out on the first showing of the original cult hit series from Denmark The Killing, a gap in my TV viewing I mean to fill as soon as I can, given the enormously positive reception it received.

So what do I make of the follow-up? Well, the first two episodes were extremely watchable (the more so by comparison, since the previous night I’d watched a rubbishy film called The Resident which was shorter than the two hour-long episodes but was so annoying that it felt as though it might never finish).

The story is a mix of the personal and the political, a bit like the recent UK series Hidden, but better. A woman is found murdered in bizarre circumstances. Her husband is a suspect, but it soon seems that there may be a link with a second killing. The woman was a military lawyer who worked in the Middle East, the man was an ex-soldier. A third strand of the story involves another ex-soldier, now confined to an institution and mysteriously denied his release.

The structure of The Killing II reminded me of the early series of Taggart. Three or four enigmatic story-lines, connected in some (we hope) ingenious way. And, as in the Glaswegian series, dogged detective work, this time by Sarah Lund and Ulrik Strange.  The suggestion at the moment is that Muslim fundamentalists are responsible for the killings, but we don’t really believe that, do we? Could the military man who is father-in-law to the institutionalised bloke be key to the story? That’s my bet at the moment, but we shall see. I certainly plan to keep watching.