Italian Dramas

February on MHz Choice features a pair of new Italian dramas with Six Women and No Place Like Home. In Six Women, a mystery surrounding a missing 16-year old girl (Leila) is unraveled over the course of three days in the scenic city of Taranto (Puglia), Italy. Leila’s case is championed by Anna Contie (Maya Sansa) a prosecutor who is struggling to hide her alcoholism. Anna connects the other five very different women who each conceal key pieces of what lead to Leila’s disappearance.

In No Place Like Home, the consequential event of the series is no mystery at all. Family patriarch Pietro (Francesco Acquaroli) dies and leaves his beloved Roman restaurant to his sister and nephews as well as his own three children, forcing the family to manage the restaurant together. There are overlooked siblings, multiple black sheep, control freaks and tense family dynamics. The season toggles between present and past slowly revealing the roots of all tension.

Set in the Past

Historical events and key turning point moments are great backdrops for German series Divided We Stand and Norwegian series State of Happiness.

Set in the recently reunified Berlin in 1991, Divided We Stand mimics the complicated impact of reunification on people’s lives in the form of a co-investigation between East and West German law enforcement. A high-ranking minister charged with scrapping East German military weapons is murdered, which brings together Kara Schubert (Nadja Uhl), an East German homicide detective, and Peter Simon (Fabian Hinrichs, Tatort), a West German Superintendent who leads a special unit investigating crimes committed by the former GDR (German Democratic Republic) regime. They struggle to set aside their prejudices, but then begin to uncover a wider web of crime.

The 1969 Norwegian oil boom is the backdrop for State of Happiness. Set in the seaside town of Stavanger, a fishing village is transformed when a large sub-sea oil basin is discovered off the coast. Opportunities abound but success doesn’t find everyone equally. The rise of the oil industry is chronicled through the town’s residents: Anna Kellivik (Anne Regine), a secretary at the town hall, has a front row seat to consequential political decisions; Christian Nyman (Amund Harboe) is Anna’s fiance and works on an oil rig; Toril Thorstensen (Malene Wadel) is a young woman with different goals for herself than her conservative parents; Fredrik Nyman (Per Kjerstad) is Christian’s father and owns Nyman Shipping and Cannery; Arne Rettedal (Vegar Hoel) was the real-life mayor of Stavenger, Norway in 1969.

New Nordic Noir

Two new series from Finland debut this month bringing crime to remote areas and unlikely perpetrators. In Bordertown Detective Kari Sorgonen (Ville Virtanen) moves his family from Helsinki to Lappeenranta, a remote town on the border with Russia. Dreams of a quieter life quickly become out of reach as murder and a kidnapping brings crime closer to Kari’s family than he would have ever expected in a small town.

Crime is even closer to every member of the Valli family in A Good Family. Niko Valli (Elias Salonen) is in trouble. Lucky for him, help comes in the form of both his mother Anna (Maria Sid), a homicide detective, and his father Henrik (Samuli Edelmann), author of crime novels. Niko’s parents know how to cover their son’s tracks and keep him hidden from danger. What Niko’s parents don’t know is that their spouse is also helping Niko. Anna and Henrik are each secretly helping their son but the family secrets don’t end there.

February also marks the end of the heavyweight Nordic Noir classic series The Bridge with the final season premiering this month. You can watch the original subtitled production or dubbed in English.

Not from the Nordics, but the Australian Lambs of God could very well fit into any Noir category. Emmy® Award Winner Ann Dowd (The Handmaid’s Tale, The Leftovers) stars as a devout matriarch who lives with her sisters in a monastery on a remote island. When a priest arrives, he threatens to disrupt more than the sister’s isolation.