You take your coffee (Nordic) noir
When you wake late in the morning, groggy from late-night shots in the gloomy village tavern where you overheard three men discussing what sounded like a plan to kidnap the mayor’s daughter, you stare yourself down in the bathroom mirror, then drown your hangover in a cup of coffee as pitch-black as your dreams, the night all around you after the hour of 2pm, and the worldview of the show you find yourself in.
Your car is an EV (evocative vehicle)
Haring down a rural highway in pouring rain that signifies the moral ambiguity of the modern world, through forests that keep a host of dark secrets, your car is either so shiny brand new that it reflects the limbs of the trees around you, and the close, darkening skies. Or it’s a pile of filthy old metal that testifies to your dislocation from the world around you and your obsession with the case that has haunted you for years, to the detriment of every other aspect of your life. Nothing in between.
Your cleaner has a murky backstory
You didn’t think too much of the woman who comes to clean your house every Thursday and every other Monday. After all, she’d presented herself with impeccable credentials. You aren’t someone who much cares about the state of their home, causing you, perhaps, to leave piles of important papers lying around the place, which your cleaner may, perhaps, chance on while you’re out examining an unrecognisably charred corpse down at the mall. Little did you know about her involvement in the case, being the mother/daughter/neighbour of the victim, who seeks redress for the crime.
Your favourite foods are pickled
You simply love a pickle. Be it herring or gherkin, you need your food bite-size and briny, chomping pensively as you dedicate yourself wholesale to the case that consumes you night and day. If it comes in a jar, you’ll eat it.
You enjoy long, creepy walks in the forest
To take your mind off the gruesomely violent case in which you have become embroiled, why not take yourself off for a long trudge through the forbiddingly tenebrous woods at the bottom of your ramshackle garden? Being something of a loner, you think nothing of getting a breath of fresh air in the forest that also doubled as a crime scene in episode three. This will be a delightful way for you to unwind, far from any wrongdoing.
Your world is lit in icy-blue
Throughout the year, from the minute you wake to the second you lay yourself down to sleep the feverish half-sleep of the tormented, you find yourself perpetually bathed in chilly grey-blue light. Your kitchen at home, but also the inside of your brand new or decrepit car, as well as your shuttered offices and the town hall where you do battle with shady bureaucrats, are for some reason lit in this hue, which follows you wherever you go. Sometimes you wonder if they turn the big light on after you have left, but you dismiss that thought as delirious ramblings.
You aren’t so great with your fellow humans
Your daughter tries to talk to you at breakfast; so does your brother-in-law, over drinks in the local brewery. They wish to tell you about mundane events that befell them in the last few weeks, things they appear to believe you should be interested or emotionally invested in. Their chatter is just ambient sound to you. You cannot understand why they are distracting you from the investigation. You dismiss their concerns with a wave of the hand, which, you are pleased to see, buys you some crucial time away from them, on your own again at last.
You are surrounded by uniformed incompetents
The bungling officers down at county hall, jumping to idiotic conclusions from evidence that only you understand, are just some of the aforementioned people that you rather struggle to engage with. One of them, a junior officer, a hopeful young buck assigned to the case with you, tries to pique your interest with his findings, not understanding that you work alone. When he dies in an ambush you are at last free to continue your casework alone, after a brief period of having to pretend to care.
The only thing more important to you than solving crime is a chunky knit
What, this old thing? The cosiest item of knitwear the world has ever seen has been in your possession for 30 years. It confers on you close to supernatural powers. Cosseted in your comfy Aran wool – the only soft thing in your world – the gorgeous patterns and lovely whirls of knit in this chunky sweater, a gift from your old father just before he died, make you cut a different figure down at the police station, causing your colleagues to foolishly underestimate your expertise.
The activities in your small-town investigation are linked to wider issues
The death of a teenager in mysterious circumstances, in the case that plagues you night and day, would not obviously appear to be connected to globalisation, the environment, patriarchy and reproductive rights, and yet astonishingly all of these topics come to bear on the case. None of these issues bother you, in your determination to solve the thing, and yet … there they are.
What will you be watching as the nights draw in? Head to Viaplay where the gritty detectives and grim misdeeds of Nordic noir will keep you on the edge of your seat
