Beck, episode one, review: the lugubrious Swedish detective makes a welcome return

Slow and steady wins the race. In 2005, there was Wallander. In 2007, The Killing. In 2011, The Bridge. The holy trinity of the Nordic Noir boom that captured our hearts and televisions, and prompted a surge in chunky wool jumpers and Danish lessons on Duolingo. Before all of them, however, there was Beck (BBC Four). And now, after all the flashier, slicker, more attention grabbing Scandi crime dramas are mere water under the ?resundsbron, there is Beck. The tortoise has won.

This is the eighth series of the sturdy Swedish detective drama, starring the magnificent Martin Haber as the lugubrious, dementedly normal Martin Beck, but only the 39th episode. For comparison, since Beck began in 1997, there have more than 200 episodes of Silent Witness.

The whole show is a study in wholesome parsimoniousness, a celebration of the steady, a hymn to the reliable. It never flies too close to the sun, but it always flies, with the writers, Haber and Martin Beck himself seeming determined to prove that less is more. Beck, the journeyman, will never burn out.

A huge amount has changed since 1997 – most notably the withdrawal of Martin Beck. He’s still there, still the beating heart of the Stockholm police force, dropping in every now and then to do a Columbo impression or look befuddled, but he’s older, less capable of hotfooting it after suspects or taking part in heart-pumping stakeouts. The action is carried now by Kristofer Hivju (Games of Thrones’s man-mountain, Tormund Giantsbane) as the Norwegian outsider, Steinar, and his boss, Alex Beijer (Jennie Silfverhjelm), along with their faithful team.

The case this time revolved around a murdered teenage drug dealer, his kingpin uncle and a Line of Duty-esque undercover cop, who was, potentially, in too deep to ever be recovered. To seasoned Beck watchers, however, the delight comes in the interplay between the main characters and the glimpses – only glimpses; less is more, remember – we get of their private lives.

TV cops’ home life troubles are a cliché, but Beck never clobbers us over the head with it: Martin’s quiet loneliness, Alex’s mild but palpable regret at leaving her high-octane job in the Middle East, Steinar’s clumsy divorce. These threads have been teased out over years, not dumped at our feet in a sack.

Being a Scandi drama, we English speakers can, as ever, delight in the oddities thrown up by the subtitles and by the Scandinavians’ natural multilingualism. One very important plot point in this episode was two kilograms of cocaine procured by a police officer, dubbed “cop-coke”, which in Swedish became “snut-cola”. It would also be instructive to learn if “You’ve really s--- in the toy cupboard this time” is an ancient Swedish proverb, or something spirited up by a bored subtitles writer.

Anyone coming to this episode fresh would likely decide that Beck was an average but watchable crime drama, reliant on the usual cop show gimmicks (an undercover cop forced to execute someone; a hero cop shot down in denouement; lots of running), but for those who have been watching since the late Nineties, Beck is a welcome old friend. One regular feature is Martin’s unwilling interactions with his pesky, interfering old neighbour, Valdemar (the venerable Swedish actor Ingvar Hirdwall). These vignettes are beautiful, tracing as they do Martin’s state of mind. Now, Martin, who once tried to avoid this silly old man at all costs, welcomes Valdemar’s company. He’s an old man now, too. Let’s hope this old tortoise plods on a while yet.