She’s impulsive, temperamental and a loving mother to Rose, her 17-year-old daughter. She’s a crime reporter, and spends as much time battling what she sees as the injustices of the world as she does her own inner demons – both with equal ferocity. She’s 40-something, recently divorced and she just moved back to her hometown of Aarhus – ostensibly to put some distance between her and her ex, but secretly so she can embark on a search for the son she was forced to give up for adoption by her Jehovah’s Witness parents when she was 16. Her name is Dicte Svendsen, and this is her story.

You’re going to recognize a number of popular Danish actors in this one, starting with Dicte herself, actress Iben Hjejle. Iben got her big break 20 years ago in director Søren Kragh-Jacobsen’s award-winning feature Mifune (1999), and followed that up with a co-starring role alongside John Cusack and Jack Black in director Stephen Frears’ acclaimed romantic comedy High Fidelity (2000). On the TV side, Iben is probably most well known for her role as comedian Casper Christensen’s on-again, off-again girlfriend in the cult Danish sitcom Klovn, along with its two feature film spinoffs.

Lars Brygmann plays Detective John Wagner, Dicte’s reluctant ally on the police force. You might recognize Lars from his roles as political bête noire Troels Höxenhaven in Borgen, policeman Thomas La Cour in Unit One and Leon (the bank robber) in Lulu the Bank Robber’s Wife. His “Lulu” bride in that series, Lene Maria Christensen, also plays his (eventual) love interest in this series – Dicte’s best friend, Ida Marie! Chemistry abounds when she and Wagner meet, but it takes a while for these two to get together.

Dicte’s other best friend, Anne, is played by Lærke Winther, who starred as pathologist Mia Vogelsang in the original Danish production of Those Who Kill.

And last, but certainly not least, Game of Thrones alumnus Dar Salim plays photojournalist Bo Skytte in Dicte – his other TV credits include Borgen and The Bridge, and he most recently starred as Abbas in both seasons of Spring Tide.

Dicte is a production of Miso Film, the Copenhagen-based company responsible for a number of MHz Choice subscriber favorites: Varg Veum, Acquitted, and Those Who Kill. But even among those exceptional titles, Dicte stands out by using its crime plots as windows into the psyche of a strong and engagingly complicated central character. Each ten-episode season (there are three of them) peels back layers and develops rich, satisfying lives for all the characters. This is a crime drama, of course, but the focus here is definitely on the drama. And what exquisite drama it is. We’re all in for quite a ride!