The Killing review

[Westside Steve]

The Killing
Netflix
Four Seasons.      TV 14
You probably know I’m a little bit ambivalent about the folks at Netflix. Even though I think they are often weasels and chiselers there is some worthwhile entertainment to be benched if you know where to look. In reviewing any of their series there’s a risk that they will pull the plug on something currently in production. The Killing has for finite seasons that provide closure at the end of a truncated but planned number 4.
The series is based on a Danish show and I think we all know how bleak the Danes can be. I’m going to try to avoid any real spoilers but if you plan on giving this one a shot you might want to do so free of expectation, be warned. This is a crime drama that follows the exploits of Partners Sarah Linden and Steve Holden. Joel Kinnaman and Mireille Enos. She’s a neurotic cop who becomes obsessed with the cases she’s working to the exclusion of all else in her life including her marriage her divorce her son Etc. He’s also neurotic in another way, more quirky than actually nuts, a chain smoker as well as a health food fanatic whose approach to police work is a little rough edged. Somehow the two forge symbiotic relationship as they work together to solve a really complicated crime concerning the murder of a young and seemingly innocent teenage girl. What makes the series so compelling are all the side stories and subplots including dirty dealings with land developers and politicians, a corrupt mayor, his opponent, a Dudley Do-Right councilman, the skullduggery going on within an Indian Casino, the parents of the murdered girl, dad’s checkered past, and that’s just some of what makes the show interesting. They don’t waste a lot of time pondering or showing vast expanses of scenery, it’s more like 3 minutes of each of these stories and bang off to the next. You never get bored and each situation remains fresh in the mind as you binge. I personally get frustrated with mysteries, films and novels that telegraph the outcome in the first chapter or pull something right out of, well, the when they run out of story.As THEY KILLING goes from episode to episode it’s like the Firesign Theatre said, “everything you know is wrong.” 
I will let this one piece of information out and that’s that it takes two full 13 episode seasons to get to the bottom of the first crime and you probably won’t even be able to guess until the finale, and maybe not even then.
In the tradition of the bleak danish original the show is set in Seattle where it appears to be raining and gloomy at least 90% of the time. Still leak or not it’s hard to resist going from one episode to the other. 
Oh, just for the record, Showtime dumped the series after season 3 but Netflix picked it up and added a very nice resolution at the end of season 4.
A
WSS