'Wisting' series review

Wisting is a Scandinoir television series which airs in the UK on BBC4 from 28 December 2019 onwards. It is not, as I at first thought, the name for the thing that happens after an unsuccessful sexting experience.

The series is set in Larvik, a town on the southern coast of Norway. Trivia alert! Larvik actually exists and it's most famous son happens to be an Oscar Adolf Wisting, who alongside his buddy Roald Amundsen was the first person to reach both the North and South poles.

Smash

A smash in its native Norway, Wisting has all the credentials to be the next Bridge, since we’ve got a hunky male lead (stage actor Sven Nordin, just watch those cheekbones in action) and a foxy female lead who happens to be from the US. Moreover, FBI Special Agent Maggie Griffin is played by the amazing Carrie Anne Moss, last seen as Jessica Jones’ lawyer! The excuse to shoehorn in American characters, therefore opening up those lucrative English-language television markets, is occasioned by the plot involving a US-born serial killer who returns to his ancestral home of Norway in order to firstly reconnect with his roots and secondly to murder lots more people. He has a rather bizarre modus operandi, which involves kidnapping young blonde women, abusing them and then throwing them down a well.

Wisting’s daughter Line (Thea Green Lundberg) is a young blonde woman so you can probably imagine what’s going to happen to her. This points to a general problem with the plot, in which events are a bit too predictable.

Another criticism I have is that instead of focusing on the gorgeous, bleak, often snow-covered countryside around Larvik (as for example Fortitude and Jordskott do very well in their respective settings), the series ends up mostly hanging out in grubby offices and houses. To reach the giddy heights of peak Scandinoir I’d expect more scenery. That's not to say it’s easy following on from what’s gone before, but the drone shots of bridges are too plentiful. The Bridge already had those shots and that was because of the Oresund Bridge which links Malmo and Copenhagen. The bridge was basically another character so it made sense, whereas with Wisting, the bridge shots seem rather unnecessary.

Odd

The series is based on not one, but two, books by bestselling Norwegian author Jørn Lier Horst. Does this perhaps explain the odd structuring, since there are ten episodes but by the end of 5, we have already nobbled the serial killer! Afterwards a whole new storyline starts up with Wisting being accused of mishandling a murder case from almost two decades ago. Yes, it was fun to watch the descent of Wisting from national hero for finding the serial killer to TV disgrace for allegedly bumbling his first murder case, but the overall rhythm of the series is disturbed.

In fact to be honest I gave up at episode 7, which is unusual for me. So maybe it gets better again, but I doubt it. I got fed up of the over-acting from both Nordin and Lundberg and I simply wasn’t invested enough in the new plotline to carry on. Ultimately, I just didn't care. And the Expanse was on.

So Wisting isn't a bad show, it's well-made, it has cool small roles for people, it's gender-balanced but somehow this is more of a miss than a hit for me, despite Carrie Anne Moss. And as a last thought, could there really be that many murdered women in a sleepy town in Norway over the course of the last twenty years?