In Blood Sacrifice, a new Swedish crime drama on Netflix, a police detective approaches his estranged father, who is an ex-cop himself, to help him solve a series of grisly murders. So, is the show a procedural, an exploration of a father-son relationship, or both?
Opening Shot: We see the clock at an emergency dispatch center in Stockholm. As we hear the flurry of calls come in, one dispatcher takes a call from a woman who screams that someone has a knife and is going to kill her.
The Gist: Two police officers are dispatched to the suburb of Värmdö; one enters the house and then calls for help from his partner. Both officers are attacked and killed, in rather grisly, ritualistic fashion. The next day, police detective Thomas Berg (Jakob Oftebro) views the bodies in the morgue, and sees that their heads were cut off. At the bloody crime scene, Berg finds out from the forensics specialist that the killer used a small knife to decapitate the officers.
As he starts to investigate the killings, he sees the similarities to a case that happened in Söderhamn a few weeks prior, with a police officer being stabbed to death, her head almost severed. Despite the fact that there is a suspect in custody in that case, Berg lobbies his boss, Rebecca Björklund (Irina Björklund), to get the file so he can examine it.
At home, Berg’s wife Charlotte (Lisette T. Pagler) tells him that she wants to throw him a birthday dinner, and she wants to invite his father, Alfred Berg (Peter Andersson). Thomas and Alfred aren’t on the best of terms, and since he was forced out of his job as a police detective, Alfred has become a bit of a recluse, concentrating on his model trains and drinking beer.
Berg makes a convincing case to his boss that the authorities in Söderhamn have the wrong man, and that the murder of the cop there is linked to the murders in Värmdö. When they bring that idea to Rebecca’s boss, he says that Berg has to investigate this on the down-low, in parallel to the main investigation. He’s given one colleague to work with him, and he chooses Natalie Eklund (Electra Hallman), a young, dedicated detective.
But when his father Alfred doesn’t show up to his birthday dinner, he goes to Alfred’s house. Alfred knows the real reason why his son is there, though: To ask for Alfred’s help investigating the police killings.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Blood Sacrifice, created by George Kay, is pretty classic Nordic noir (aka Scandi noir), along the lines of Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole and The Åre Murders.
Our Take: Blood Sacrifice is an example of a show where the mystery at its center is intriguing and, even in the first episode, it looks like it’s going to be pretty intricate. But the way the main character makes his way into the mystery, and the way he brings his father into the investigation, is contrived as all get out.
Whoever is committing these murders is undoubtedly clever; the person wears two different shoes so that when forensic investigators find two different bloody footprints they think two people are involved. As Alfred and Thomas figure out at the end of the episode, the killer uses a recording of a previous victim and plays it on a call to emergency dispatchers after the next killing. This is a killer who certainly knows how to cover his or her tracks (they assume it’s a man, given how hard it is to cut off a head using a small, serrated knife).
In other words, Thomas Berg is going to need all the help he can get. But then he walks into his father’s disheveled house, complains that he never cleans up or sees his granddaughter, and is about to leave when Alfred says, “I know why you’re really here!” That’s how this ersatz investigative partnership begins. We’ve seen less tortured link-ups in Korean rom-coms where an accountant falls for a cupcake designer.
There is obviously a lot of history between Thomas and Alfred, and we hope that will be explored as the two of them work to figure out who the killer is. There also seems to be a bit of a seasonal element to these killings, as the killer calls each murder in at 1:15 AM, when Stockholm is darkest in the summer months — and even then it’s not completely dark, due to the city’s northern location. Whatever ennui and other morose feelings associated with that will likely seep in. But this show has the potential to be really good if the father-son relationship is given a chance to breathe amongst the procedural stuff.
Performance Worth Watching: Peter Andersson is just the right amount of grumpy, misanthropic and drunken as Alfred Berg, but we also see Alfred brighten up when he has a case to sink his teeth into.
Parting Shot: Another call comes into emergency dispatch, again at 1:15 AM. The voice on the line screaming for her life is probably the female cop that was killed in Värmdö.
Sleeper Star: Electra Hallman’s character Natalie is just the kind of eager young cop that will likely see things that neither Thomas nor Alfred will.
Most Pilot-y Line: When Charlotte arrives at Alfred’s house, she has to knock on a window to get him to answer the door. “Don’t take it personally. If I had known it was you I would have answered the door,” Alfred says confusedly.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Blood Sacrifice presents an intriguing mystery, but we hope that the relationship between the father and son investigating the killings at the center of the show gets the time it deserves.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.