Sebastian Bergman - BBC Four TV review

I watched The Cursed One, the first episode of Sebastian Bergman last night, having missed its original airing last year. This was the second new (to me) series that I've looked at this week, having taken in the first of a two-parter basead on Denise Mina's work, The Field of Blood, a couple of days before. There's a view in some quarters that the quality of British crime shows on TV doesn't compare with that of those from Europe at the moment. I don't agree, but although The Field of Blood certainly has its merits, of the two shows, I found (slightly to my surprise, to be honest) that I was more struck by Sebastian Bergman.

A good deal of this has to do with the terrific performance of Rolf Lassgard as the eponymous crime profiler. At first, Bergman comes across as a deeply troubled and unattractive individual, but the more one learns about him, the more one see the depth in the portrayal. As well as the quality of the acting, the quality of the writing, by Michael Hjorth and Hans Rosenfeldt, is responsible for this. I was impressed.

The opening is striking - a young man, apparently injured, is walking across a football pitch when a sniper shoots him. The victim, it turns out, was leading quite a complicated life, and unravelling it depends not just on some good detective work, but also Bergman's profiling skills. All in all, I thought the plot was handled very well - its trickiness and use of false solutions was reminiscent of Inspector Morse, even if the mood was very different.

Whilst I'm afraid I always find sub-titles a deterrent, I found the story interesting, edgy and twisty enough to keep me gripped from start to finish. Once the culprit was identified, there was still time for a further turn of the screw, as Bergman solved a mystery from his past life. This struck me as genuinely poignant. A very good episode, and I'm glad I have caught up with it at last.

Hidden and The Field of Blood - reviews

I’ve caught up with the final episode of Hidden, which I’ve reviewed here before, and also seen another recent BBC TV crime show, The Field of Blood. The contrast between the two was striking.

Hidden first. It was full of action and plot developments, but it all became pretty incoherent. A sad waste of the talents of a cast that included David Suchet as well as the charismatic Philip Glenister.  Disappointing.

The Field of Blood, unlike Hidden, was not originally written for TV. It was a two-parter adapted from a novel by a talented author, Denise Mina, though I haven’t read it. Set in 1982, the story concerns a young woman, Paddy Meehan, who is keen to make her way in journalism.  The abduction and murder of a young boy gives her a chance. But her own youthful cousin becomes a suspect.

The script was an odd mixture. There were some good lines, but the first episode was painfully slow at times, and there was a weird and monotonous insistence that Paddy was fat and plain. Jayd Johnson, who played Paddy, is certainly neither. And I also felt the repellent sexism of the newspapermen was rather unsubtly depicted.  

But the pace picked up, and the second episode was excellent. David Morrissey and Peter Capaldi, in relatively small parts for such notable actors, were very good, but Jayd Johnson was at the centre of everything that worked best. And the story had some interesting things to say about families - also a theme of Hidden. The Field of Blood tried to do less than Hidden, but in the end made much more of an impact.