This miniseries moved something in me, and that is what I want to write about. It will probably serve no great purpose, but the thoughts stirred by those unsettled feelings need to get out. So here they are.

Even the almost incomprehensible brutality of the crime surfaces only with great caution. But that is precisely it – this careful, tentative approach, this slow working towards the truth, creates a tension that never let me go. That is what moved me, and that is how the series won me over.

The series shines through the absence of the usual triggers designed to deliver an emotional jolt, to build tension or signal a twist. No piece of information suddenly leaping at you and steering the story in an entirely new direction. Nothing that startles you – yet the work as a whole leaves you shaken nonetheless.

Then there is the music, through which the story finds its true emotional depth and by which it is carried. The same goes for the dark atmosphere and the subtle performances of the outstanding cast. With a Nordic coolness in which the profound emotions of everyone involved reflect reality more faithfully than most of what I have seen elsewhere.

Parents and investigators alike are gripped by deep feelings that rise to the surface only with great care. No one explodes. No one screams at each other. No one smashes a chair or anything else, even though the opportunity presented itself far too often. Because life in reality is far quieter than anything cinema has always sold us, and streaming services sell us today.

The investigators’ approach impresses through a stoic, consistent working-through of the case over several months. Never giving up. Never stopping. Always pressing on. That is what I would call hard work. Not the kind of work that seems aspirational, but one in which a duty and a purpose can be recognised that promises something: resolution. Because this is about nothing more and nothing less than the life of an innocent person who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and had to give their life for the perversion of a monster.

Insight creeps in slowly through the steady process of working through the smallest of tasks, repeated again and again – like the work of the divers who search small patches day after day, week after week, even month after month – until they come together into a fragment and finally into a picture that makes sense.

Almost no one finds redemption, but they find resolution. And that is perhaps the true motivation that drives everyone involved for so long, until they could bring their work far enough that some form of justice could be served. The weight carried by each person is visible and palpable in every scene.

For crimes like these – for murder itself – there is no justice. No punishment in the world can undo the horror that one person has inflicted on another. It is always only about being able to accept what has happened, in order to be able to carry on – yes, to have to carry on. Because whatever happens, life always goes on.

The Investigation (2020)