This week’s double bill took us into ever deeper, icier water with more murder, more soaring birds’-eye shots of snowy Stockholm and even a supernatural sighting (not something you get every day in Scandi-noir).
I think it’s fair to say that, at least thus far, Modus is no Bridge or Killing. And though I don’t think we can or should compare all shows from our Scandinavian neighbours, there are enough similar tropes here that it’d be hard to avoid comparison.
Modus can be daft, hammy, a little too obvious – and the cliches rain down like cats and dogs. But, I’m mildly embarrassed to say, I don’t think that matters especially. Call it a willing suspension of taste, but Modus is certainly entertaining. And with the nights now drawn in, a Scandi-noir – subtle or otherwise – is exactly what the season ordered. So put on your fur-trimmed parka, hot-wire your car and join me as we sort the truth from the femi-nazi conspiracy.
This week kicked off with shifty Erik lobbing Elisabeth’s laptop into a freezing lake in Uppsala. She turns up momentarily, a vivid mirage in the pale landscape, I suppose as a sort of thanks to her husband for hiding her secret.
With the body of Isabella found in the hotel basement at the end of last week, Ingvar visits Inger to ask if she’s sure Stina didn’t see anything – they found a size 2.5 footprint and a hair bobble (Stina, remember, was lining some up in a neat row on her way to the wedding) at the crime scene.
But Stina is standing firm – and who can blame her after the encounter in Stockholm’s answer to the Horniman museum. When her dad, Isak, loses sight of her for a moment, the killer is waiting for her amongst the taxidermy – grimacing wolves, a moose, stag and wild cats. “Don’t tell your mom, and I will never be back”, he says in his decidedly iffy American accent (the actor, a quick Google tells me, is Austrian). While she does eventually admit she saw Isabella in the basement, she says she saw no one else. She even keeps stumm to Linnéa when they’re having a heart-to-heart under the covers at their grandparents’ house in the country. If only she hadn’t!
Prompted by fear for her daughter’s safety, Inger decides to come on board. It’s not long before she’s typing things into her computer like “narcissistic personality disorder”, “dark tetrad” and “impulse control issues”. Who wouldn’t want Inger on the case?
We learn more about the killer when, safely ensconced in his caravan, he prays for forgiveness for “not appreciating love when love was there”. He flicks through photos showing what seem to be his late wife and child. And this week’s prize for most gammony moment goes to him whispering “I miss you so much” to a photo of his son.
One night, while he’s eating his tea, another of his several phones flashes. This time it’s a picture of an industrial-looking building with a tower. Cut to Marcus and Rolf who have just been told by Patricia, the blond half of the lesbian couple they co-parent Noah with, that they’re going to be dads again (cheer up, Marcus!), and Rolf and Patricia head out to a trendy exhibition opening – in the exact building the killer just looked at a picture of. Who’d have thunk it.
The opening can best be described, from Rolf’s perspective, as an emotional rollercoaster. At first he’s giggling with Patricia about not being able to see the naked model’s “dick”. Then he seems convinced that the artist, Niclas “I love old bodies” Rosén, is up to no good with his husband. The saucy subtext of all the chat about male bodies – in purple, plastic or chocolate – is that Marcus and Niclas are doing more than just 3D printing.
But when Rolf confronts a tartan-waistcoated Marcus about the fact he’s spotted Google searches for Niclas on his computer, Marcus assures him that he’s just a candidate for one of his foundation’s art grants. Even if Marcus manages to convince Rolf (and us) this time around, it gets harder to believe the link between them is quite that innocent (I would say platonic, but could Marcus be Niclas’ father?!) when he cries, and distracts Rolf with talk of dog food, upon learning of the artist’s death. And what’s with his comment that “maybe he was just a fraud. Someone who drained other people?”
And so to that death … our caravan-dwelling killing machine is once again lurking. This time, he’s in the industrial estate near the gallery. We can all breathe a sigh of relief as Patricia’s taxi arrives – she’s staying alive for two now, remember – but poor Niclas is not nearly so lucky. The killer stages the murder to look like a heroin overdose. But our Ings soon learn the truth. In a brilliant scene that typifies the awkward, unglamorous romantic meanderings of Scandi-noirs, looks are shot across the postmortem table where Niclas’ corpse lies, as medical examiner Hedvig tells them she found no trace of heroin in his blood. Instead, there’s a neuromuscular blocking drug called suxamethonium, the kind used in lethal injections in the US.
Inger proves she’s worth her investigative salt from the get-go. Looking on Isabella and the bishop’s websites, she spots comments – “narcissistic wannabe” and “feminazi” – that because of the language and similar misspellings look to be by the same person. She calls Ingvar to tell him, and he makes a quick change out of his dressing gown – he’s had his flirty, apparently married, colleague round for a romp! – to confirm that, yes, they are the same person: Lennart Carlsson AKA 666 AKA Dala Horse, a man with priors, including stalking his ex-wife, who lives – wait for it – in that den of nefarious crime (as this programme would have us believe) Uppsala.
Carlsson’s reaction to being arrested by Ingvar’s team is adolescent. And looking round his house, it all starts to make sense. There are scattered tissues from his “one-man sex”, as Inger puts it. A sticker of the confederate flag (his involvement with the radical churchgoing American starts to fit in). Inger profiles him then and there: “Computers are his only social outlet. No eye contact, no code of conduct. No understanding whatsoever of the feelings of his harassment victims.” His porn library “all serves the purpose of reinforcing his sense of masculinity. His sense of entitlement to women and sex.”
A monster, then. But – hang on! – he’s got alibis for the nights of the murders, and one of them (being in Stockholm on Christmas Eve) fuels Inger’s suspicion that it’s this “son of a bitch” who took pictures of Stina outside her house. And what’s this in the scanner? Something about Cafe Intime with a bunch of times on it. “Why is it English?” Inger wonders. It obviously has something to do with our killer’s next move.
When Inger eventually comes face-to-face with Carlsson, it’s brilliantly tense; never were stares so deathly. Carlsson mouthing “fucking bitch” at her was one of the more shiveringly disturbing TV moments I’ve seen for a while.
And this is just the first of a few things that slot into place for Inger. Though none, I must admit, seem particularly hard to slot? Looking at pictures of the exhibition opening party – in which Niclas is apparently standing so close to a man that it’s obvious (?!) “he’s in love with that guy” she has a thought. And after the best part of a bottle of red and a Chinese takeaway, she divulges her newly spun theory: “Isabella Lavin was gay … Niclas Rosén was gay. What if the bishop’s husband protected his wife’s secret? That she was gay? Is that the common denominator for these three homicides?” Ingvar, not the sharpest knife in the drawer, eventually catches on: “Hate crimes. Hatred for homosexuals?”
It now seems only a matter of time before Erik’s son cottons on too that the woman from the picture is not in fact his sister, but his mum’s lover; the woman Erik visits this week for soup, a cry and a conversation about his “pact with God”, which I think must just be to keep Elisabeth’s homosexuality a secret?
The theme of hate crimes continues with a lesbian couple who had just been at Niclas’ funeral being harassed and beaten on their way home, in spitting distance of Cafe Intime no less. And, again, the killer is lurking. But it’s not for this pair; it’s for poor old Robin. By this point we’ve met him a few times – outside Rolf and Marcus’ palatial house, where he asked his mum, their housekeeper/nanny, for money. And the next morning when, presumably having spent said money on booze and drugs, he shouts at his mum because he’s trying to sleep, before later leaving her an apologetic voicemail.
As the blue lights flash for the beaten-up women, our killer follows Robin down an alleyway and smashes his head against a wall. Somehow, though, when caravan man wanders to see what the sirens are for, just for a second, Robin manages to escape.
Thoughts and observations
Is it me or do things tend to get most hammy when the characters speak in English? (Remember Kill Brothers from season three of the Bridge?) Could it be that all Nordic noir is hamtastic and its subtitles pull the woolly jumper over my eyes? Can’t be true – cannot compute.
It’s a very awkward moment when Ingvar and Isak cross paths at Inger’s door. Poor old Isak, with his broken heart and Weasley-family aesthetic.
Let’s just for a second revisit that monologue from Niclas Rosén: “I love marble statues, where plasticity is on the surface. Nothing’s hidden, and yet, or maybe because of that, the craft gets in the way of the work. So by exhibiting a real body, an experienced body, I capture its artistry, texture and eroticism, its life, its authenticity. I love old bodies.”
“Course I’m okay to drive home. I’ve only had half a bottle plus I’m a cop, I know the back roads” = policeman lolz.
It’s a sweet exchange between Inger and Hakim Hammar. He seems to have a bit of a fanboy moment, introducing himself as someone she met five years ago at a lecture. But she remembers him! And the name of his son who, like Stina, is on the spectrum.
It’s pretty adorable when Erik’s grandaughter thinks the three wise men are called Casper, Jasper and Jonathan.
