Bête Noire

How to understand the incomprehensible?

At a time when horrific school shootings are happening around the world, the questions are many and painful. Perhaps the biggest is; how could this happen?

This ambitious series attempts to find answers, provide insight and perhaps some clues as to how a young person enters a school and kills schoolmates.

The series is both about trying to get clarity on events surrounding a school shooting. This is followed up by an investigation that we become involved in. At the same time, the main emphasis here is to portray how the next of kin cope with such a crisis. The series chooses to focus on relatives of the perpetrator. The series brings out the inhuman stresses these people experience. The phases they go through. Hate from the outside world. Lack of support. How incredibly hard it is to accept that your child is a mass murderer. Here the series succeeds very well. The parents and sister's long road to regaining a life is portrayed very well.

I feel that the investigative track in the series is more or less like a thread, into which the rest of the action is interwoven.

The series could perhaps have been somewhat shorter, the plot more concise. But still, this is both a demanding and incredibly well-made drama series about a topic we all find very difficult to understand and take in.