Female investigators fight the chill

In three Nordic noir streaming series, tradition of strong women prevails.

Drone shots gliding just above snow-covered treetops. The nighttime lights of Stockholm, Copenhagen, Reykjavik. A color palette that rarely strays from white, gray, blue and black. These are some of the signs that you’ve entered the Nordic noir zone.

And one other: a brusque, grouchy heroine whose issues go beyond cold nights and long winters.

There’s a tradition of strong, bottled-up female detectives in Scandinavian crime drama, dating back to Sarah Lund in “The Killing” and Saga Noren in “The Bridge.” It continues in three shows that have recently become available on the Eurocentric streaming services Walter Presents and MHz Choice.

“Modus,” “Missing” and “Cover Story” each centers on a woman struggling with the Nordic noir version of having it all: being a good mother, achieving work-life balance and tracking down a vicious killer.

‘Modus’

Melinda Kinnaman — half sister of another noir star, Joel Kinnaman of the American version of “The Killing” — plays a criminal profiler in this overheated and overly complicated but entertaining Swedish series on Walter Presents. Her character, Inger Johanne, has left police work for academia out of fear for her family’s safety. But she’s drawn back in when her autistic daughter witnesses the first in a series of murders.

Inger’s situation is remarkably aligned with those of the other women on this list. None has a full-time man in her life. Each has a problematic relationship with a daughter who is or may be in danger. Each of those daughters resents the mother’s devotion to her work.

“Modus” has a couple of other features common to its genre. The mystery plot has a sociopolitical dimension, as the murders turn out to be part of a pattern of hate crimes. And the hate isn’t home grown: It emanates from America.

Kinnaman’s levelheaded performance helps sell the more gimmicky aspects of the story, and further gravity is provided by Krister Henriksson — star of the Swedish “Wallander” series, available for streaming on Netflix — as a husband with secrets. A second season is about to begin on Swedish TV, starring, perhaps alarmingly, the U.S. actors Kim Cattrall and Billy Campbell.

‘Missing’

Like Inger, the Stockholm detective Maja Silver is unwillingly pulled into a case. Having chosen her career over her family years before, she makes a vacation visit to her small hometown to try to reconnect with the daughter she left behind. So perhaps it’s karma when the discovery of a body coincides with the death of a local policeman, forcing her right back to work.

“Missing,” a four-part miniseries streaming on MHz Choice, is polished, well acted (particularly by Helena Bergstrom as Maja) and great to look at. Religious fanaticism is at the center of the plot, as it is in “Modus,” but the mystery doesn’t have a big payoff — the focus is on the relationships that develop among Maja and the local cops, and further seasons seem like a no-brainer.

‘Cover Story’

Originally called “Pressa” (“The Press”), this Icelandic series on Walter Presents is a melodramatic, sometimes hilariously unrealistic depiction of journalism that also captures the moment-tomoment texture of the newspaper business about as well as a TV show can.

Sara Dogg Asgeirsdottir plays Laura, a reporter who manages to get embroiled simultaneously with an oil executive who may be a rapist and murderer and a drugdealing motorcycle gang. She comes with a high body count: In one six-episode season her work gets one family member beaten, another killed and a colleague put into a coma. Her doggedness stems partly from her journalistic ideals but largely from the need to pay an 800,000 krona fine in a defamation case.

Shadowed, as all Icelandic series are, by the fallout from the 2008 financial crisis, “Cover Story” is distinguishable from the Swedish series by its cynicism and a lurid spark that reflects the spirit of the tabloids where its characters toil. A second season will be available on Nov. 16.