The first time Jo Nesbø’s brooding detective Harry Hole trudged from the airport book shelves list to the screen was in 2017’s “The Snowman,” the Michael Fassbender-starry flop as troubled as its antihero. A rushed shoot, which cut roughly 15 percent from the script, made its mystery entirely incomprehensible, while a misguided marketing campaign centered on childlike doodles made what, on the page, was a disturbing psychological thriller look as menacing as “Jack Frost.”
“If this were the opening act of a TV miniseries, you’d be exploring other channels some time between the second and third ad breaks,” IndieWire own review read amid a wave of merciless reviews, which explains its pitiful Rotten Tomatoes rating of 7.
The bar for Hole’s first actual TV miniseries, therefore, is ridiculously low. But by clearing it so convincingly, the Netflix adaptation of his fifth case, “The Devil’s Star,” should leave most Nordic noir fans entirely oblivious to their remote control until the final ninth episode’s credits roll.
It helps that there’s a distinct lack of carrot-nosed snowballs, with directors Oystein Karlsen and Anna Zackrisson preferring to show Oslo — both its trash-filled inner-city streets and picturesque lake house communities — in the glorious sun. And with apparent links to the illegal arms trade and a malevolent secret society, its serial killer isn’t quite so whimsical (his calling card of placing a small pentagram-shaped red diamond under his victims’ eyelids is certainly grislier).
Adapted by Nesbø himself, “Detective Hole” (pronounced “Hoo-leh” for those snickering in the back) also boasts a much more convincing leading man.
While Fassbender continually looked lost and listless, Tobias Santelmann embodies the character — described by Nesbø as a cross between Frank Miller‘s Batman and Norwegian soccer coach Nils Arne Eggen — with a committed intensity that compels from his opening scene, one which establishes his default state of shirtless, sleep-deprived, and obsessing over a crime that’s haunted him for aeons.
On this occasion, it’s a bank robbery from five years previously where a clerk, having failed to provide the cash within a strict 30-second countdown, is shot in the head: in a neat visual trick often repeated, Hole envisions himself in the thick of the action before snapping back into reality. Soon after, the weapon used is traced back to Sverre Olsen (Arthur Hakalahti), a young arms dealer operating in a downtown warehouse populated by the city’s underworld and, according to the 70 percent assurance of face recognition expert Beate (Ellen Helinder), a familiar presence within the force.
Step forward Tom Waaler (Swede Joel Kinnaman playing Norwegian), a physically imposing, leather-clad detective with a somewhat cavalier attitude to obeying the law. Could he be facilitating the turf war between Oslo’s dominant gun-toting gangs? And does he have any connection to the spate of seemingly random killings carried out everywhere from a student dorm to a legal firm’s bathroom? He sure has a convenient habit of showing up to the scene of the crime before anyone else, a fact which doesn’t go unnoticed by his workplace rival.
Of course, Hole himself isn’t averse to breaking bad, either. There’s the cold open flashback in which, under the influence, he drives his partner to his death. He’s nearly run over by two drug addicts while trying to bribe them for information on Olsen’s whereabouts. And having well and truly fallen off the wagon, the recovering alcoholic arrives at one particular murder scene in the full messy throes of withdrawal.
It’s here where the show succumbs to the usual tormented cop cliches, whether it’s Hole going rogue after being officially thrown off the case, taking to an angst-ridden shower, or, in his most blatant act of self-destruction, inciting a fight by spitting into another man’s beer. There’s even a pinboard montage in which he desperately tries to piece the knotty puzzle together, although in fairness, even Hole himself recognizes its futility (“I haven’t found a fucking thing!” he screams in despair).
Nevertheless, Santelmann’s nuanced performance, reversing the dynamics of his murderous turn in Danish crime drama “Those Who Kill,” allows you to forgive the occasionally clunky script: see the unintentionally amusing gang shootout where one state-the-obvious mobster (an underused Peter Stormare) finds the time to shout, “The bastard cop lied to us.”
Hole is the typically flawed archetype, yes, but he also possesses an endearing more specific sense of humor that leans toward the deadpan (“No, I don’t have anything against Swedes… in general,” he tells the department’s Stockholm transfer). Meanwhile, his relationships with love interest Rakel (Pja Tjelta) and her pre-teen son Oleg (Maxime Baune Bochud), the latter evolving from hostility to a touching surrogate father bond manifested via the sport of platform diving, provide the emotional heft “The Snowman” was sorely lacking.
“Detective Hole” sounds great, too, and not just for the well-chosen needle drops which range from local alt-pop (Susanne Sundfør, Gundelach) to American classic rock (The Doors, Ramones). In perhaps its biggest coup, the show managed to bag the talents of the Prince of Darkness Nick Cave and his regular Bad Seeds cohort Warren Ellis, with their nervy, atmospheric score proving once again that few are better at conjuring suspense.
Karlsen — who’d previously worked with Nesbø on Leonard Cohen biopic “So Long, Marianne” — and Zackrisson also showcase a strong visual flair, particularly during Episode 2’s macabre journey through an apartment’s block pipework into a blood-soaked shower. Squeamish viewers should be warned that the series doesn’t skimp on gore, or indeed, gratuitous violence: in fact, the opener’s first victim suffers a brutal demise that borders on torture porn, while it also has a habit of lingering on the sight of naked female corpses a little too enthusiastically.
Unpleasant voyeurism aside, this is undeniably a cut above the similarly themed but far more ludicrous potboilers of Netflix’s Harlan Coben stable. With a dozen other Hole novels to choose from, the promised franchise frozen by its disastrous predecessor may finally start to heat up.
“Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole” starts streaming on Netflix globally on Thursday, March 26.
