Whodunnit? Beard, bobble hat or hoodie
A IS FOR AUTOPSY. Haven’t you seen it? Oh, but you must! Autopsy is the latest box set from Denmark (or is it Sweden?).
The heroine is a forensic scientist called Karla who wears a bobble hat and who’s having to examine a different naked corpse each day, because there’s a serial killer on the loose.
In episode 9, series three, Karla discovers a clue under a dead woman’s toenail, but I won’t tell you any more or it’ll ruin it for you. BEARD, MAN WITH THE: But is the man with the beard who is about to jump off the bridge the same man with the beard we saw robbing the bank in episode 18? BINGE: So we watched The Crown for seven episodes back-to-back, and by the seventh episode the Queen Mother still hadn’t finished having lunch with Neville Chamberlain, the Duke of Windsor and Noel Coward. BINOCULARS: In the latest off-beat dark drama from Finland (or is it Sweden?), when an old man living alone picks up a pair of binoculars, you can be sure he’ll soon be training them on a woman in the house over the road while she gets undressed. BIRTHDAY PARTY: ‘Sadly, I had to miss my mother’s 70th birthday party because we still hadn’t finished watching episodes 9 to 12, series 3 of Slum, the dark, offbeat new series from Sweden (or is it Denmark?)’ CATARRH: All the obvious maladies affecting off-beat detectives — a limp, depression, OCD, partial blindness, bereavement, ADHD, a tricky home life, terminal cancer — had already been taken. This is why the detective in The Unmasking, the latest dark, off-beat new series from Denmark (or is it Norway?), features a detective suffering from mild catarrh. CHRISTENING: ‘I’m afraid we had no choice but to miss the christening of our niece because we just had to catch up with episodes 13 to 17, series 5 of The Strangling, the dark, off-beat new series from Norway (or is it Finland?).’ CUT IN HALF WITH A CHAINSAW: in Episode 5 of every hugely dark, off-beat new crime drama, a corpse is cut in half with a chainsaw. DON’T TELL ME! ‘But is Kelly-Anne telling the truth when she says she was with her disabled mother at the time the drug dealer was killed with a pick-axe? Don’t tell me!’ EIGHT HOURS: We had been watching The Execution for eight hours before we realised that the man with the beard who was the moody Deputy Chief Inspector was a completely different person from the man with the beard who had been spotted prowling around the disused warehouse. ENDING, HAPPY: After six beheadings, five rapes, four stabbings, three suicides, two hangings and one impaling, I’m holding out for a happy ending. FLASHBACK: Who’s that little girl in the floral dress who’s standing grief- stricken in the designer living-room over the corpse of the woman I don’t recognise? Where are we? What’s happening? Oh, I see — it’s a FLASHBACK! GET ON, DON’T: If the brawny male detective doesn’t get on with the petite female detective in the first episode, you can be sure they’ll be devoted to one another by the end of episode 23, and by episode 72, he’ll save her at the very last minute from being garrotted by the serial killer with the mad eyes. GIVING UP: ‘Sorry, but I was bitterly disappointed by Breaking Bad. After 27 episodes, I decided to give up.’
GOING ON? Could someone tell me: If what Sven told Sofie about Johan was true, then why did Magnus tell Sofie what Johan told Vilads? And what’s the significance of the one- eyed beggar? And which one is Emil? What on earth is going on? GRUNT: Every fourth word in the latest gritty U.S. crime drama from Netflix is an indecipherable grunt, eg: ‘ You wanna know grunt? I’m beginning to grunt that the only way grunt ever know what grunt to the nightwatchman grunt is to ask the grunt’. This is because scriptwriters are still holding out for a 25 per cent pay rise. HAPPY: If you spot a schoolgirl playing happily in episode 2, you can be sure she will be kidnapped in episode 3. HELMET: Anyone wearing a motorbike helmet in a dark, new off-beat crime series is bound to rob a bank at gunpoint. HIDE, SOMETHING TO: ‘He’s grunt hiding something, but what?’ ‘I’ll tell you what he’s hiding — it’s the grunt grunt grunt’ ‘My god! That’s the clue we’ve been waiting for!’ JOKE, THE LAST: The last joke to be heard in a gritty crime drama from Sweden (or was it Norway?) was in 2007. Consequently, the series proved a complete flop, and was canned after only two series.