You don’t have to be mad to make Scandi-noir thrillers, but it helps
What we want from Euro-telly are weird conspiracy theories action-packed crime plots, dysfunctional middle-class families and lots of gore.
there are bonus points for minimalist furniture, adultery and chain-smoking.
BBC4’s completely bonkers Spanish legal drama I Know Who You are, which concluded on Saturday, delivered the lot. It didn’t so much arrive at an ending as get taken away in a straitjacket.
Filling its place is the deranged Valkyrien (Channel 4), about the aftermath of a bank heist gone bad. It’s set in an underground railway station that doubles as a nuclear bunker and mad scientist’s lair.
this subtitled Norwegian thriller was screened for one day only as part of what C4 execs call a ‘stunt launch’. the other seven episodes are available to stream as a free online boxset on the all 4 website.
While you’re there, you can also find around three dozen other Euro serials, each loopier than the next and all gratis — including a comic history of organised crime in France (tony’s Revenge), a fantasy about a Czech businessman who can breathe underwater (the Invisibles) and a black comedy from Belgium starring four sisters who plot to kill their ghastly brother-in-law for the insurance money (the Out-Laws).
It’s a good job this august has turned out to be the UK’s monsoon season because, after you get stuck into that lot, you won’t have much time to go out.
Valkyrien doesn’t disappoint. the first three scenes seemed entirely disconnected, starting with the disastrous raid: the lookout was so busy stuffing euros into his holdall that he let the bank door slam shut, trapping the other robbers.
It was a moment of surreal silliness. a drama that began as a full-pelt thriller, all guns and balaclavas, suddenly looked like a Seventies sketch show. as the clumsy crook panicked and tore off his mask, I half expected Dick Emery to be standing there.
there followed apparent excerpts from a horror movie and a soap opera, as a demented doctor (Sven Nordin) inspected a cage full of dead rats in a dank hide-out, and then — reappearing in a plush boardroom — lost his temper with a medical team who refused treatment to his dying wife.
the only clue that these scenarios were related lay in the colour schemes. Everything at the bank job was tinged with blue. the lunatic’s den glowed radioactive green and the hospital offices were dazzling white.
these colours were reassuring. they sent a subliminal message: ‘trust us. We know what we’re doing. It’s quite mad, but what else did you expect?’ Real madness is staring endlessly at Facebook on the stunted screen of a mobile phone. that’s how tech journalist Jamie Bartlett spends his time, as he admitted in Secrets Of Silicon Valley (BBC2).
On average, he wastes fiveand-a-quarter hours a day on his phone. ‘the strange thing is,’ he mumbled, ‘I don’t even really know what I’m doing for those hours.’ he would have said more, but something on his phone caught his attention.
Jamie and his trendy man-bun were in California, investigating how political lobbying firms use social media data to target ads and influence elections, one voter at a time.
a canny pollster offered to assess Jamie’s personality, via computer analysis of his Facebook posts. he duly reported that the presenter was ‘highly intelligent’, a journalist and might have been raised Catholic.
that science is about as reliable as a palm-reading at a fairground. It’s what fraudulent psychics call a ‘cold reading’, but, of course, Jamie lapped it up.
CAVE BABY OF THE WEEKEND: Little William was exploring Bronze Age copper mines, carried in a sling by his mother, archaeologist Sian James, in Iolo’s Great Welsh Parks (BBC2). Judging by his wide-eyed look, he’s a TV natural.