Koskinen

No special effects. No charming handsome male actors or sexy female actors. No car chases. No romantic drama among co-workers. No nudity. Little to no sexual content. Therefore, most Americans would be bored watching an interesting Finnish crime series and the reviews prove my point. Season 1 on PBS kept me interested and entertained every episode watching the team solve crimes. The characters are believable and the acting is good. It is always interesting to watch foreign series and the way people live, their homes, their interests, clothing, traditions, and personalities. Koskinen didn't disappoint. I'm looking forward to Season 2.

The English name for this series is "Lakeside Murders" because the setting for the programme is in the city of Tampere which sits between two lakes, Näsijärvi and Pyhäjärvi. The city is rather beautiful with distinctive food and a vibrant youth and cultural scene but if these murders are to be believed, there is a dark underbelly to the surface glamour.

That's reflected in some way in the goodies of the programmes. They are all so ordinary or even homely. These aren't the glamorous detectives that some police procedurals use. The murders aren't ordinary however and are rather esoteric. There's always a refreshing twist or angle to the investigations too.

I don't want to leave spoilers but the first series ends on a shocking cliffhanger. I haven't seen the second yet but imagine there are some pretty serious repurcussions stemming from it affecting the team and the city itself.

I'm going to have to get round to watching it soon.

This series from Finland is complete with a poorly written script and some really bad acting. The fact that it streams on Walter Presents is enough to tell you this will be the case as that's a platform that searches out mostly failed European series and rebroadcasts them on other channels! The actors deliver their lines in a monotone, which could either be related as to how Finnish is spoken, or just an amateurish level of acting. The stories are convoluted, made worse by bad editing. This makes for little continuity in every episode. Scenes seem to be placed randomly and events happen in an illogical manner and often without context to understand their placement in the sequence of events. It's really a low quality, poorly planned series!

Stunted dialog and scripting. The acting is "soap-boxish" to the point of being amateurish and laughable if it wasn't so painful to watch. The staging reminds me of a high school stage production. The plots themselves have some merit and depth but they are developed and dramatized in such a shallow and mechanical way that they lose much of their potential impact. I have really tried to give this series a chance by watching three and a half of them, but I have reached the point at which I can no longer justify the waste of time when there are many much more worthwhile alternatives available, many of which are Walter Presents.

In Finland, all Actors are very popular and on the subject. They are top professionals, like the production team and directors. The execution is very good and entertaining. But if you know anything about Finnish legislation or police operations, watching the series is really awkward and unpleasant. Events, investigation teams, police activities and all content are infinitely far from reality.

And on the other hand, you don't have to be Einstein to realize this.

But summa summarum, 100% entertaining to watch, where you don't have to use your own brain at all. Just keep your eyes open and stare.

And I don't say the following in a bad way, but it is an adult children's series. Easy to understand, but 200% fiction.