Snow Angels

A very realistic series about a number of bad decisions in your life, unwilling criminals and innocent victims. The actors' and actresses' play is as usual in the Swedish, Danish films, outstanding. As much as we don't want to notice and acknowledge...life is more than black and white.

One of the best tv shows I've seen in years, Snow Angels (on UK's All-4 streaming service) is the 6-art account of the disappearance of an infant child and the sympathetic scrutiny of his shocking family life. A drug-addicted mother and a reformed addict father, who is heroically loyal to her, struggle to cope with the arrival of a second child into their hand-to-mouth existence. Meanwhile we follow the trials of a maternity care nurse whose job it is to make evaluations of the ability of new parents to cope. How will these two harrowing narratives intersect?

Snow Angels is a difficult but compelling watch, tender and sad, shocking and utterly involving. A series that goes where most others, for all their shock and gore and posturing, would fear to tread.

Highly recommended.

Sometimes almost too painful to watch, but this features an astonishing performance by Maria Rossing as Maria - I cannot find words to adequately describe it and don't want to issue spoilers. But the acting all round is just superb, and especial mention has to go to the young girl who plays Nicole. Best drama I have watched in ages.

As this six-part Swedish series opens Nicole, a young deaf girl, returns home on Christmas Eve and wakes her mother. It soon becomes apparent that her five year old baby brother is missing. She calls the police. At first it is assumed he is with her taxi driving husband but when he returns it is clear that isn't the case. When the police return to the apartment husband Salle flees. The following two episodes show the events running up to the disappearences, focusing on this family, Alice and Maria, a postnatal nurse who had been concerned about the boy. Once back to the present various truths emerge.

This is not a cheerful series but it is well worth watching. The central mystery is gripping but it is much a character study as a whodunit... or more precisely a what-was-dun. The series really captures the feeling of cold with subdued tones and dark, sometimes a little too dark, scenes. The cast does a fine job making the varied characters believable and interesting. Without giving details I will say that the explanation does not seem obvious. Overall I'd recommend this to fans of grittier Euro-drama.

These comments are based on watching the series in Swedish with English subtitles.

This was a hard watch: a poor struggling family, cynical cops, overwhelmed social services, abandoned children. Yikes!

Doesn't sound like much of recommendation but if you have the stomach for it, it is a powerful and human story dramatized and made all the more real by some truly superb acting. You fluctuate one moment from deeply disliking some of the characters to their breaking your heart in the next, from everyone seeming guilty to everyone's just a tragic victim.

The actor who plays Samir, the baby's dad, gave one of the most incredible performances I've ever seen, and the actor who played Jenni, his wife, as well.

Like I said, it's a hard story to watch, but the performances alone pull you in and make it worth it.