No one does a dark and grisly murder like the Scandinavians. The steadily increasing popularity of the sub-genre known as Nordic noir (or Scandi-noir) is a testament to this fact, as both viewers (and readers!) of all stripes embrace this twisty, atmospheric style of storytelling, known for its moody visuals, dark themes, and complex protagonists. Deftly subverting the clean lines of traditional crime procedurals, which tend to offer neat solutions and defined ideas of good and evil, Nordic noir features complicated protagonists, difficult, often grisly cases, and sharp social commentary that’s insightful and uncomfortable by turns. Plus, they’re just fun to watch: Smart, intelligent dramas that trust their audiences to keep up with their many twists.
Now, with the excellent Nocturne, which is based on Swedish husband-and-wife team Alexander Ahndoril and Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril’s The Sandman novel, reigniting the genre all over again, it seems like a perfect moment toinvestigate some of the other great stories in this space you might have missed.
The Chestnut Man (Netflix)
Number of seasons: Two (The second is called The Chestnut Man: Hide And Seek)
Based on a novel by Søren Sveistrup—who is also known as the creator of the original The Killing (Forbrydelsen)—this Danish thriller from 2021 digs into a string of grisly serial murders, all of which are accompanied by the inclusion of a disturbing figurine made of chestnuts and matchsticks alongside the various mutilated dead bodies. Each of the deaths ties back to a missing person’s case involving a powerful politician’s (Iben Dorner) daughter who disappeared a year earlier, and its tightly plotted episodes are full of both surprising and occasionally disturbing twists.
As with most Nordic noir shows, The Chestnut Man isn’t scary, per se, but it is deeply disturbing, complete with an eerily unsettling children’s playground rhyme at its center and themes of child abuse. The unorthodox pairing of seasoned Copenhagen detective Naia Thulin (Danica Curcic), who just wants to get out of the homicide business, and disgraced Europol investigator Mark Hess (Mikkel Boe Følsgaard) is a highlight and a rare instance in which romance is hinted at in this genre space. The sequel series The Chestnut Man: Hide And Seek premiered earlier this year.
The Killing/Forbrydelsen (Tubi)
Number of seasons: Three
The Scandi-noir series that kicked off a global obsession; many viewers are probably familiar with the basic beats of this story thanks to the U.S. remake that aired on AMC in 2011 and starred Mireille Enos and Joel Kinnaman. But, as is often the case with such things, the original series is far superior, featuring a tighter story in which the murder investigation is mapped over 20 consecutive days/episodes and a clear answer is revealed about who killed teenager Nanna Birk Larsen at the end of the series’ first season. (AMC’s version famously added a season-ending cliffhanger.)
Forbrydelsen premiered on Danish TV in 2007 and was seen as fairly groundbreaking for its time, abandoning the familiar procedural case-of-the-week format in favor of intense, slow-burn pacing spread over many episodes and a story that took the grief of victims and their families as seriously as the work of those attempting to solve the crime.
Jo Nesbø’sDetective Hole (Netflix)
Number of seasons: One
Adapted from Jo Nesbø’s fifth book, The Devil’s Star, Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole is notable simply for being a massive step up from the 2017 Michael Fassbender film that most people only remember because of the ubiquitous snowman memes. Tobias Santelmann stars as the titular, amazingly named detective, who’s broody, driven, self-destructive, highly chaotic, and obsessed with catching killers.
The show features plenty of gruesome murders tied to a ritualistic serial killer and some fairly ludicrous plot twists, but its most interesting element is Hole’s determination to take down corrupt fellow detective Tom Waaler (Joel Kinnaman), who is also assigned to the case. Generally great in everything, Kinnaman is especially good here as an unhinged narcissist with great fashion sense and a disturbing penchant for shocking violence.
Wallander (BritBox)
Number of seasons: Four
Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander books were foundational texts of the initial Nordic noir publishing boom in the 1990s, telling bleak Scandinavian-based murder mysteries long before it was cool. Wallander has been adapted for the screen multiple times, including several Swedish feature films and a TV series starring Krister Henriksson. (There’s even a weird, present-day set prequel, titled Young Wallander, that…exists.) But the most well-known adaptation has to be the BBC series starring Kenneth Branagh that ran for four seasons from 2008 to 2016. (It aired in the U.S. on PBS’s Masterpiece.)
Branagh’s turn as the depressive, weary Wallander is one of the best performances of his career, and he gives the famously spiky, disgruntled detective rich emotional layers. A talented investigator with a generationally messy personal life, Wallander is the blueprint for so many of the detectives who’ve come after him in his space, wrestling with burnout, existential despair, and an occasionally almost suicidal empathy for the victims of the crimes he’s been tasked to solve. The cases themselves are admittedly not always the greatest, but Branagh’s commitment to mining the depths of one broken man’s soul cannot be overstated.
The Bridge/Broen (Pluto TV)
Number of seasons: Four
Another all-time classic of the Nordic noir genre, this joint Swedish-Danish production also inspired an American remake, which relocates its story of murder and political tension to the U.S./Mexico border and stars Diane Kruger and Demián Bichir. A surprisingly well-done series, it’s definitely worth watching, but the original, once again, is simply the superior show.
The premise is (rather gruesomely) simple: A body is found sliced in half on Øresund Bridge, straddling the border between Denmark and Sweden, an event which forces socially awkward Swedish detective Saga Norén (Sofia Helin) and her more laid-back Danish counterpart Martin Rohde (played in the first two seasons by Kim Bodnia and by Henrik Sabroe in seasons three and four) to work together across international lines to find the truth. Much of the original Broen revolves around this odd-couple detective pairing, who are definitely an example of the adage “the whole is better than the sum of its parts.” Moody, atmospheric, and packed with plenty of artistic establishing shots of the titular bridge, it’s got a bit more politics involved than some shows in this space, but handles its occasionally complex subject matter deftly.
Equinox (Netflix)
Number of seasons: One
Nordic noir series aren’t known for being particularly frightening. Grim, bleak, and bloody, sure, but these tend to be stories that are more concerned with human monsters than things that go bump in the night. But the 2020 Danish series Equinox has a decidedly supernatural bent, following a radio host (Danica Curcic) still grieving the disappearance of her sister some 20 years before. All but three members of Ida’s (Karoline Hamm) graduating class disappeared in 1999, but when one of the survivors calls into Astrid’s show insisting they know what happened to the missing girls, she decides to investigate.
As Scandi-noir detectives go, Astrid is a bit nontraditional, but so is the story in which she stars, which introduces elements that initially feel like a better fit for a drama like Netflix’s Dark. Still, the story tackles the same deeply human questions of loss and grief that appear throughout this genre, and is full of twists enough to keep viewers guessing about what’s really going on right to the end.
Trapped (The Roku Channel, with Season 3 on Netflix)
Number of seasons: Two, plus a third outing on Netflix renamed Entrapped, which is technically season three of the same story.
Location and setting are usually crucial elements of any Scandi-noir series—how else is the show meant to maintain that perfectly bleak, gray atmosphere? But 2017 Icelandic drama Trapped takes things a step further by making its setting a key part of its larger story. The series’ first season takes place in a small town in eastern Iceland where a mutilated body washes up onshore just before a massive blizzard hits. The victim, it appears, has only been dead for a few hours. But with the roads closed and no additional resources available, local police chief Andri Ólafsson (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) and his partner Hinrika Kristjánsdóttir (played by Ilmur Kristjánsdóttir) must find a way to stop a killer on their own.
Keep scrolling for more great stories.