Nora (Marie Sando Jondal) couldn’t have done a better job of trashing her career if she’d planned it. A Danish journalist working in London as a correspondent, she was supposed to be working on a profile of a “controversial” millionaire businessman. Which, in a way, she was; she was also sleeping with him, which might not have been quite so disastrous if he wasn’t then promptly arrested for fraud.
Now she’s back home and listening to media reports about how she’s “weakened faith” in the media and destroyed her own credibility. With nowhere else to go, she moves back to North Zealand to live with her father (Bue Wandahl), settling in for a long stretch of lonely walks on the windswept beach and awkward one-sided conversations.
Based on the first of a series of best-selling novels by Danish author Lone Theils, and brought to screen by writer-producers Arne Berggren and Kristine (another of their co-creations, Recoil, is also at SBS On Demand) Berg Fatal Crossing establishes Nora’s plight in a few deft strokes. We know there’s more to come than simply a portrait of someone who threw it all away, thanks to an ominous opening that features sinister music, glimpses of a photographic dark room through a half open door and a voice over telling us that “the decisions that matter most… the most important choices… they demand regret”.
But there’s also the mystery of Nora herself, which is a big part of what makes this series so intriguing right from the start. As we follow Nora from scene to scene, she keeps everything locked away, her face blank. There’s no explanation for why she slept with the businessman she was meant to be reporting on; when friends and family try to reach out to her, she gives them a shoulder so cold it might as well be frozen. She’s a driven investigator with nothing to drive her.
Then we get a quick glimpse of a police briefing – which also serves as our introduction to local policeman Andreas (Jesper Hagelskær Paasch), an old friend of Nora’s who’ll be important later – that lets us know something suspicious is going on at the local beach. At first it just seems to be a local creep following girls. Nothing worth getting worried about… until one of the girls goes missing.
The same night, Nora finds an envelope full of photos stuffed in her mailbox. They’re of two girls who vanished on a boat to England back in the ‘80s. Someone who knows Nora is back home wants her to have those photos – someone who knows her instincts as a journalist won’t let her leave the mystery alone.
Nora Sand (Marie Sando Jondal). Credit: Shuuto AS
Over the series’ eight episodes there’s more than the usual amount of twists and turns. The mystery of the two girls rapidly expands in ways hard to predict, with a growing list of suspects and a string of possibly related crimes. The past is shown to be a dead weight on many characters – and there’s still the most recent disappearance to investigate, which stirs up more bad memories.
That’s a problem for Andreas. He’s happy to help Nora – and the pair have great chemistry, thanks to strong performances from both actors – but it was his police officer father who investigated the initial disappearances and wrote them off as the two girls simply running away. Did his father simply mess up, or was there a cover-up?
Andreas Jansson (Jesper Hagelskær Paasch). Credit: Shuuto AS
Moody and atmospheric, Fatal Crossing makes good use of strong visuals (there’s some nice use of handheld cameras to add energy to the storytelling) and a powerful soundtrack to help drive a narrative that’s as much about dealing with yesterday as it is solving the mysteries of today. Everyone’s choices here have weight; everyone here is still dealing with their past.
None more so than Nora, whose own traumas drive her onwards to uncover the truth. She’s far from flawless and sometimes stumbles in her quest. Her focus is often turned inward, leaving others shut out or worse; she makes mistakes, and sometimes she misses details she should have noticed.
And that’s a serious problem when it becomes increasingly obvious that the killer she’s looking for is also hunting her.
Fatal Crossing is streaming at SBS On Demand.
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Fatal Crossing
series • Crime drama • Danish
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series • Crime drama • Danish
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