7 Nordic Noir Dramas to Binge This November

Bordertown

Moving somewhere quiet to escape the darkness only works if the darkness doesn’t move with you.

Detective Kari Sorjonen moves his family to a quiet town on the Russian border for a calmer life. It is not calmer. He brings a near-photographic memory and a very odd way of thinking to some of the best-written Finnish TV of the last decade.

The Darkness

An Icelandic winter, Lena Olin, and a serial killer the Reykjavík police would rather forget.

Lena Olin is Hulda, a Reykjavík detective being eased into retirement, who gets one last case and refuses to let it go. It’s based on Ragnar Jónasson’s novels. An Icelandic winter does half the acting.

Deadwind

A slow, grey, heavy noir where the murder is just the backdrop for a story about burnout.

Months after losing her husband, Helsinki detective Sofia Karppi goes back to work and finds a body tied to a green construction firm. Slow, grey and grief-heavy, it’s the most Finnish-winter thing you’ll watch this year.

The Bridge

The body on the border, the two cops who can't stand each other, and the show that started the Nordic noir obsession.

A body is placed exactly on the border line of the Øresund Bridge. Saga Norén, a Malmö detective with zero interest in small talk, has to share the case with her Danish counterpart. This is the show that turned half of Britain into Nordic noir people. 

Wisting

Written by a former Norwegian police investigator, so the procedure actually feels real.

It’s adapted from the novels of Jørn Lier Horst, a former Norwegian police investigator, so the procedure feels real. Sven Nordin plays William Wisting, a quiet, decent detective. In season one, he’s joined by an FBI agent (Carrie-Anne Moss) hunting an American serial killer hiding in Norway.

Nocturne NEW

The killer is already behind bars. The problem is the victim he never gave back.

It’s set in the US, but the DNA is Swedish: the show is built on the bestselling novels of Lars Kepler, the pen name of a Swedish husband-and-wife duo. Stephen Graham plays serial killer Jurek Walter, Liev Schreiber the detective, and Zazie Beetz the FBI agent sent to take him down.

Wallander (BBC)

Kenneth Branagh's Wallander is the role that made him a national treasure and it's still the best introduction to the character.

Before the Swedish films and the upcoming Gustaf Skarsgård version, there was Kenneth Branagh. He played Kurt Wallander for four seasons on the BBC, bringing a quiet, exhausted intensity to the detective. 

It's the version that introduced British audiences to Nordic noir in the first place. And if you want the original Swedish take, the new Wallander with Gustaf Skarsgård is coming soon.