WORTH INSPECTING
There is something strong to say in favor of MHz’s collection of European dramas and cop shows and Inspector Winter is a quality example. Based on the popular crime novels of Äke Edwardson, his Swedish detective (Magnus Krepper) is a craggy-faced, 40+ pile of insecurities and power, as depressed as a Scandinavian mid-winter living a precarious life in Gothenburg facing the ocean. His kindly wife is a surgeon who worries about his health and future, he has two gorgeous under-ten daughters, and he is very good at his job.
The three-disc, four-episode season is definitely worth watching but it seems obvious that the show only lasted one season due to lack of originality. Well-written, -produced, and -paced, it’s still a knock-‘em rock ‘em kind of show that you wouldn’t exactly waste your time watching.
Each of the episodes are in two hour-long segments.
Episode One: “Beautiful Country.” Sweden’s love-hate relationship with its Middle-Eastern immigrants is explored when someone kills two refugees and another worker in a small mom-and-pop convenience store next to one of those huge multi-story apartments for newcomers to Sweden. Winter and his team find fear and resentment from the people, especially those who are crooks and gangsters.
Episode Two: “Room #10.” Winter investigates how a young woman’s suicide-by-hanging resembles similar older cases which all took place in this small room in a semi-deserted downtown hotel. Who made these murders look like suicides? And why? Is Winter the real target here?
Episode Three: “Almost Dead Man.” When an abandoned automobile with a bullet hole in the read window is found on a major bridge, and more bullet-causing deaths are linked to the rape/murder of a fifteen-year-old girl some decades before, how are the crimes inter-related? And why is the one gay character at such danger?
Episode Four: “The Last Winter.” One of the downsides of being a perfectionist investigator is the internal damage: the rifts that can grow within a marriage, as well as the dangers of a revengeful perpetrator who may take revenge on Winter’s wife and daughters. This final episode, the bloodiest and the one which may make the title prophetic, is the best.
MHz Releasing does find worth-while shows, especially those from Europe, that make the excellent subtitling worth reading.
Inspector Winter
SVT/MHz Releasing
Swedish with English Subtitles
3 discs | 770 minutes | released April 24, 2018
available at MHz Releasing or Amazon
