Out now on DVD and Blu-ray

Arrow Films / Sweden / 2005 / 263 mins

The problem with Britain’s infatuation with Nordic Noir is that we got the best stuff early. The Killing and The Bridge gave us cinematic, edge of the seat thrills whilst Wallander – in its different iterations provided us with Bergmanesque existentialism blended with the odd blunt instrument. Compared to these shows, where by the end you often felt emotional drained as well as frustrated you hadn’t figured out whodunit, Van Veeteren is less strong meat, but that’s not to say there isn’t plenty of darkness on display in these adaptations of Håkan Nesser’s novels.

Like its Scandinavian counterparts, Van Veeteren doesn’t dodge the gruesome or the brutal and is insistent on de-glamorising murder, focusing on the banality of evil. The killers here are flawed, deluded or desperate and each is inadequate in some measure. As Van Veeteren, Sven Wollter is excellent; stern and obsessive with the gravitas of a Lutheran pastor. He’s a man who would be a nightmare to work for, but one you would follow down any blind alley. As series two begins we see him in happy retirement in his second hand bookstore, in fact he’s an almost peripheral character in episode one with the action taken by his protégé Munster. Episode two brings crime to his own doorstep whilst the final part flashes backs to see him in police action.

The final two episodes are linked and both pose questions about how far you can get away from your past. Wollter plays haunted well and there’s a clear implication, particularly in episode three that his obsessions make him almost as dangerous as those he tracks. Made in 2005, two years before the first Killing, there are some aspects of this show that feel a little old fashioned, particularly the over use of music, but there’s also plenty that prefigures the emotionally distant, obsessive characters we’ve come to know and love. Whilst not quite as intense or disturbing as its counterparts, Van Veeteren is still a psychologically intriguing and enjoyably bleak slice of Nordic life and well worth a televisual trip to the frozen and bloody north.