Category Archives: Abortion

2017, Abduction, Abortion, Abuse of Women, Adultery, Amnesia, Cult Brainwashing, Detective, Dysfunctional Lives, Family Conflict, Forensics, Horses, Jealousy, Kidnapping, Marital Infidelity, MHz Choice, Missing Person, Mother-daughter relations, Murder Investigation, Personality or religious cult, Police Culture, Religious Theme, Serial Killer, Sex Scenes, Suicide, Swedish, Swedish crime series, Transvestite theme

Missing (2017)

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From IMDB:

Police superintendent Maja Silver goes back to her old hometown in the Swedish Bible belt to see her daughter, when a terrible discovery paralyzes the small community.

Helena Bergström stars as Maja Silver in this Swedish TV series streamed from MHz Choice.  Only season 1 is available and consists of 4 episodes, each about 45 minutes. Swedish with English subtitles.

Religious fanaticism is the center of this series. Someone is driving young women to commit suicide. Police inspector Maja, on a visit from Stockholm to see her estranged daughter, reluctantly agrees to head the case in the small town after the police chief dies suddenly of a heart attack.

All the usual police detective soap opera pieces are in place: a jealous colleague, a former lover, an estranged daughter, a resentful police force, a transvestite father, a sexual predator, and a few religious perverts and nutcases.  None of these elements detract from a compelling four-part series.  Until the last portion reveals the answer to the puzzle I suspected the wrong person.

Try your luck at guessing who is abducting the women.

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Annika Bengtzon (2012)

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From MHz Choice:

Based on author Liza Marklund’s best-selling crime novels, Annika Bengtzon is a journalist and working mother of two struggling to raise her family. Fearless in her search for the truth, she won’t take no for an answer from anyone: not from prestigious academicians or drug dealers or from colleagues inside her own profession.

MHz Choice streams this Swedish TV crime series (with English subtitles) in two seasons. Season 1 includes 6 episodes all of which were made in 2012. Season 2 includes only 2 episodes made in 2001 and 2003.  First watch Season 1 in which Annika is played by the beautiful Malin Crépin.  Season 2 contains “Paradise” which is a prequel that tells how a young Annika fights to be a reporter, and “Deadline” which takes 2 hours and features Annika as a second-in-command at the newspaper. All the other 7 episodes last about 1.5 hours. In season 2 Annika is played by Helena Bergström who is extremely different in appearance from Malin Crépin. Visually, for example in the physical appearance of actors, season 1 is more of a crowd pleaser.

As is the case with many crime shows featuring a woman doing the sleuthing, the theme is how the woman must battle male prejudice while trying to balance her obsessive drive to do her job (here to deliver news stories)  with the demands of her family (here husband and two children). Quite a bit of really NOT boring film footage is devoted to jealous bickering in the newsroom.

Only one episode was somewhat boring. In every episode, however, the suspense is palpable, especially because  Annika’s life is usually in danger.

If you like an intense rush, try these two series.

2000, Abortion, Acorn TV, Adultery, British Mystery Series, Computer geeks, Detective, Extramarital Affair, Murder Investigation, Murder Trial, Personal Betrayal, Plot Twist, Psychiatrists, Sex Scenes, Suspense

Trust (2000)

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From IMDB:

Caroline Goodall (Disclosure, Schindler’s List) stars as Anne, a successful young lawyer married to a psychiatrist (Mark Strong, Our Friends in the North). While they seemingly lead a charmed life, their marriage is rocked by infidelity, and later, murder.

From Acorn TV you can stream this  TV film consisting of two episodes,  each episode lasting about one hour and 15 minutes.

Someone has murdered a young woman named Tara Reeves and left her body in a trash dumpster.  You get to spend 2.5 rather tense hours trying to figure out who did it. Only at the very end did I guess “who done it”.

Three worthwhile actors enact the story:

  • Caroline Goodall (who was in “Schindler’s List”) plays Anne Travers, a lawyer married to
  • Mark Strong (who who played Jim Prideaux in the 2011 remake of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy ) who plays her psychiatrist husband Michael Mitcham.
  •  Nathaniel Parker (who plays Thomas Lynley in “The Inspector Lynley Mysteries”) plays Mark’s lifelong friend Andrew Pearce who is having an affair with Anne.

After watching the police investigation and subsequent murder trial, did you guess who the real villain was?

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The Break (2016)

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From Netflix:

Soon after arriving in Heiderfeld, Inspector Yoann Peeters is called to the scene of a suspected suicide and begins uncovering troubling details.

From Netflix you can stream the 10 episodes of this compelling detective story in French with subtitles. According to Wikepedia The Break (French: La Trêve, “The Truce”) is a French-language Belgian crime drama television series

Actually this series is a soap opera with many characters,  quite a bit of sex and violence, and many surprises. In fact I would estimate that each episode has at least 3 or so unexpected  plot revelations. Not until the very, very end will you discover “who done it”. If you truly guess the answer before episode 10, then let me know.

Inspector Peeters has left Brussels with his daughter after the death of his wife and has returned to his hometown Heiderfeld in the hopes of a fresh start. He goes to work for the local police force populated by 6 or so characters whose own stories and involvements with one another are an integral part of the plot. Peeters’  daughter makes a friend and in order to fit in socially makes mistakes. There are teen friends, a soccer team and its managers, a woman mayor scheming to buy the area’s farms to make way for a dam, and subplots galore. Most of all, running through the entire story is the fact that Peeters is eventually confined to a mental hospital and is in every episode being interviewed by a woman psychiatrist of the institution, who must evaluate Peeters’ mental health. Flashbacks are a principal tool in the story telling.

Oddly enough Yoann Peeters is played by a Belgian actor Yoann Blanc whose performance (as well as his somewhat strange face with his deep set brooding, unemotional eyes that seem to stare all the time) is remarkable.

Getting to the story’s conclusion was so compelling for me that once again I binged, which is definitely not a good habit. But once you start this thriller my guess is that you too will fall under its spell.