It’s one of the amusing paradoxes of popular culture that Scandinavia has very few murders yet probably leads the world in murder mysteries. It just keeps churning out a seemingly endless supply of what’s called Nordic Noir, from the groundbreaking 1960s procedurals by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, to today’s crime novels by Jo Nesbø and Camilla Läckberg, to international TV hits like The Killing and The Bridge.
The noir spirit occupies the center of Viaplay, a relatively new streaming service that specializes in Nordic television. I’ve watched a bunch of their crime shows, several of them good, and the one I’ve enjoyed the most is Face to Face, a neatly turned Danish thriller whose protagonists — different in each season — attempt to solve a murder over the course of eight half-hour episodes. The third and final season just dropped,…
