A smile? Now that really IS suspicious!
LOST, I’M: 274 minutes into the fifth series of any box set, one character always says to another: ‘I’ve had enough of this! You and Sheila should never have told Mike that Jeff said Sue was seeing Greg! So who’s side are you on, that’s what I’d like to know?’ At this point, the viewer thinks: ‘I’m lost. Which one’s Linda? And who’s Mike and Sue? Could someone please tell me what’s happening?’
NEVER KILLED THOSE GIRLS, I: At the stroke of the 136th minute of any self-respecting box set, a father of three is told by the police he is being taken in for questioning and replies: ‘You must be joking! I never killed those girls.’
NINETEEN HOURS: Nineteen hours into your latest box set, it dawns on you that the characters are boring, the script cliched and the plot just about incomprehensible. But there’s only another 27 hours to go, so there’s no point in abandoning it now.
OUTHOUSE: When a seemingly ordinary suburban house has a shed or an outhouse, you can be sure there’s the remains of a corpse hidden inside, possibly under a loose tarpaulin. POLICE INSPECTOR: The Police Inspector is not what he seems.
SECRETS, DARK: Everyone in the snowbound town of Grymmjm has a dark secret. Frans is a sex pest. Hanna murdered Otto and hid his body in the beanbag in the living room. Before he was so cruelly murdered, Otto set fire to Hanna’s warehouse after a row with Samuel. Meanwhile, Samuel is blackmailing Frans. And for the past ten years, Detective Sonja has been taking bribes from, among others, Frans, Samuel, Otto and Hanna.
SERIAL KILLER: Every village in the West Country with a population over 15 is home to at least one serial killer. That’s what the guide books never tell you.
SMILE: In 2009, a Scandinavian series was produced in which for a few seconds at the beginning of Episode 9, one of the characters was seen to smile. This action caused a public outcry, followed by questions in the Swedish parliament.
‘The smile was an experiment that didn’t pay off,’ says ScandiNoir historian Solon MisjeriGootz, ‘and since then, no one has ever tried it again.’
SUBTITLES: For some reason, the tale of a mass murderer chasing naked women with a sharp knife is always considered much classier with subtitles.
TAKEN OFF THE CASE: In Boxset Land, the only honest detectives are always taken off the case halfway through episode three. Why? Because their senior officers have Something To Hide.
TRUSTY COLLEAGUE, THE: The trusty colleague is never quite what he seems.
UNDERGROUND CAR PARK: Whether the opening scene is set in a mountain village, a seaside resort, a high school prom or a city penthouse, there will always be a scene halfway through Episode 6 involving a car with an unknown assailant attempting to run over the heroine in an underground car park.
VICAR, THE: No vicar is ever quite what he seems. VIOLENT FRENCHMEN: One of the most unexpected things about lowlife villains and thugs in French box sets is that they always speak with such perfect French accents.
WHAT’S HAPPENING? After exactly 17 minutes of the first episode of any given series, one viewer says, ‘What’s happening?’ and the other replies, ‘Shhh! We’re not meant to KNOW what’s happening.’
WHAT THEY SEEM, THINGS ARE
NOT: The happier the family, the cosier the home, the more likely they all are to be horribly dysfunctional. If there’s one thing the box set has taught us it is that Things Are Not What They Seem.
YOU SEE THAT ACTOR? Well, I’m sure we saw him in that other series, you know, the one set in Florida, or was it California, on the coast — or was it in a city in the Mid-West?
Anyway, it was about this dysfunctional family, you know, where one brother was trying to murder the other, or was it the sister who was trying to murder their mother? Or both at the same time.
I’m pretty sure this same actor played the part of the detective, or it could have been the father. Or perhaps it wasn’t the same actor after all. I only watched it for ten series, so I find it hard to remember. Did he have a beard?
ZZZZ: It’s worth persevering for a good seven hours or so, because then it starts to get REALLY INTERESTING.