Darkness: La huella del crimen

This eight part Danish crime drama is centred on Jan Michelsen, a detective, and Louise Bergstein, a profiler. He has been working on the case of a missing woman, although after six months most people assume she is dead. Then a second woman of similar appearance vanishes. Desperate to solve the case he brings Louise in to help. Her profile leads to another, older, missing person's case... and the body from that case. While we observe their investigation we also see what is happening to the kidnapped woman and learn that she actually has two captors.

When I saw this advertised I wondered if it was a remake or a sequel to the earlier 'Those Who Kill', from 2011... in fact it is neither. It is thematically linked by the detective/profiler pairing, although the genders were the other way round in the previous series. Early on one might expect this to be a whodunit but we learn that very quickly; that doesn't make it any less interesting; it is an impressive psychological thriller that isn't afraid to use horror tropes as we are shown how the victims are treated. There is a real sense of danger both for the victims and our investigators. Kenneth M. Christensen and Natalie Madueño impress as Jan and Louise but it is Signe Egholm Olsen who stands out as Stine Velin, one of the kidnappers who despite outward appearances seems to be the more frightening of the two. The rest of the cast are solid too. Overall I'd certainly recommend this to fans of Nordic crime thrillers.

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

Channel 4 in the UK boasts that it shows a lot of foreign drama but BBC 4 shows quality foreign drama like this series.

Our government is leaning on the BBC to reduce costs and BBC 4 might disappear soon but until then it brings us dramas such as this.

No plot spoilers but this is a tense drama set in rural Denmark.

If this was American or on Netflix people would rave about how good it was but believe me it is good even if you have never heard of it.

Well acted and well scripted. I'm not sure how realistic the police work shown is but there are always compromises needed for a drama series. Excellent colloquial subtitles.

I've only recently discovered this detective series on BBC 4, and watched its third incarnation. Frankly, I can't quite undersatnd why so many have entered negative reviews.

Having to read sub-titles is a nuisance but well worth while. The story is coherent and well acted and there's little in the way of extraneous noise or scenes. The chief character, Louise, comes across as a bit of a troubled soul at times but watching her think as she considers her response to questions, or seeks knowledge from suspects, is well done.

The story in series 3 is a good one and I've been gripped from the outset - if I hadn't been, I'd have given up long before the end. It's not perfect but it's well worth a mark of 8, and much better than many of the formulaic offerings from elsewhere.

It was surprisingly entertaining and well-acted. It has a very refreshing story of a serial killer who targets male victims. It's kind of similar to the british The Fall (2013) in its structure in the way that we know who the killer is from the beginning but that doesn't take from the suspense. Towards the last couple of episodes there were some serious plotholes which annoyed me... When it's only one or two I can ignore it, but they started to pile up. However, I can still fully recommend this series because it was entertaining from beginning to end.