The perpetrator is a brutal sadist with the typical characteristics of a serial killer: the perfectly normal neighbor next door, an inconspicuous average guy. Loving father of a young son. Single parent because the woman is pursuing a career in Singapore. Employed in a sawmill, valued by the boss and colleagues. Sportsman, nice smile, lumberjack shirt. Domestic, friendly, reliable. If his boy has spanked someone else at school, sits down with the teacher and everyone involved for a mediation session. Jumps in to help when a complete stranger to him can’t pay at the gas station because she forgot her wallet. one like that His name: Peter Vinge (Tobias Santelmann). He kills men. Before he strangles them, he scratches their skin with a knife and revels in their torment.
Now please don’t get excited! The fact that the murderer is revealed in a crime series review is not a bad spoiler. Blinded – shadows of the past on Arte belongs to those series in which the perpetrator is known from the first episode – a subgenre in which the tension is not fed by the whodunit, but by the specific how and what: how the killer (and what goes on in him) proceeds. How he gets by for a long time and then makes mistakes. How the investigators are gradually catching up on him – with the special attraction that we as viewers have knowledge of the perpetrators and are always a little bit ahead of them. A prime example of this type of game that is hard to top is the British series The Fall – Death in Belfast where the sensationally cool, elegant, silky-smooth Gillian Anderson and charming Jamie Dornan (as serial killer Paul Spector) orbit each other in a captivating game of cat and mouse (can be seen in the ZDF media library).
The extensive forest areas of the island of Funen play a special role
Screenwriter Ina Bruhn certainly had it too the case in mind as she for Blinded – shadows of the past relevant set pieces together into a Nordic Noir with insight into the perpetrator. She doesn’t reinvent the genre, but uses it in a dark Danish way in a very focused, stringent and suspenseful way in the context of a rural setting, as it is presented here on the unspectacular island of Funen, whose extensive forest areas play a special role. The cool late autumn mood, the earthy colors, the warm lights, coats and sweaters do the rest. The serial killer faces three women, of which the calm, considered profiler Louise Bergstein (Natalie Madueño) is the actual main character. She was also in the first season of this Danish series anthology Darkness: shadows of the past as an investigator (2019 at Arte). The whole thing is an offshoot of the series Northern Lights – killers without regrets, who attracted attention with gruesome murders. Even Blinded is certainly not for children and sensitive viewers.
Natalie Madueño as the shrewd, level-headed case analyst Louise Bergstein.
(Photo: Per Arnesen)
Louise Bergstein comes to the provinces from Copenhagen because Alice Ejbye (Solbjørg Højfeldt), once her mother’s best friend, called her. The confident judge, an impressive matron, has cancer and not long to live. She doesn’t want to die without finding out who killed her son, who was brutally murdered five years ago. Two other young men died, but the perpetrator was never caught. Alice, who has nothing to lose, will challenge him personally over the course of the eight episodes. The local policewoman Karina Hørup (Helle Fagralid), who unfortunately remains pale as a character, involves Louise in the investigation. Because after a five-year break, the killer strikes again, and the level-headed way in which Louise thinks about the case and creates a criminal profile makes an impression. In general, Louise is anything but an arrogant better policewoman from the city. One could almost call her temperamental in her withdrawn manner. The fact that she gets closer to the perpetrator than she should as a psycho professional also shows her as unstable.
If you need action, this is not the place for you. This series draws its quiet strength from the calm, the slow narrative flow, the trivialities and banalities of normality. There is plenty of time to look around the interiors of the apartments and the faces. There is no sunlight. Creepy thrives in the dark. Since the perpetrator is nocturnal, the Nordic Noir genre literally becomes a Nordic Nuit with horror film elements (director: Jonas Alexander Arnby) – especially when Peter Vinge invades strangers’ apartments like a ghost and stands by the beds of sleeping people with his knife. He’s one of those hurt men that turns into a nightmare.
Blinded – shadows of the pastArte, Thursday, 9:45 p.m., episodes 1 to 3. All episodes in the media library.
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