Iceland is the perfect setting for this tale of mystery and depravity

The Darkness (premiere) ★★★½
Thursday, SBS, 9.30pm

On a dark and freezing night, on a lonely snow-covered street, a woman hits and kills a man with her car. We can see it was no accident, but without any witnesses besides our voyeuristic TV eye, there’s little reason for anyone else to suspect foul play. Except for Detective Hulda Hermannsdottir, who notes that the victim was a registered child molester and thinks that might just complicate matters. Meanwhile, in the vastness of the mountains, a strange woman frantically escapes from a desolate cabin and flees a faceless pursuer into the whirling whiteness – to no avail. Grim, dreadful things are afoot. All will become clear … eventually.

Lena Olin in The Darkness: a weary warrior.Credit: Lilja Jons

The Darkness comes to our screens with some heavy-hitters in its line-up. Adapted from a book by Icelandic writer Ragnar Jonasson, it stars Swedish screen legend Lena Olin (The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Fanny and Alexander) as Hulda, and is directed by the great Lasse Hallstrom (My Life as a Dog, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape). With such firepower up front, it delivers the kind of high-class production you’d expect.

Hallstrom in particular shines, pulling in close with expert small-screen intimacy and then expanding majestically with spectacularly evocative cinematic landscapes. The chilly city streets and the frozen wastes of Iceland’s wilderness contrast starkly in appearance, but both provide studies in harsh, alienating environments. In both the city and the mountains, death is lurking, and anyone could be lost forever, at any moment. There are times this most grounded, earthbound of stories seems to almost flutter at the edge of sci-fi, such is the sheer otherworldliness of the visuals.

This has always been the great strength of Nordic noir, of course: Scandinavia possesses a natural environment as stunningly beautiful as it is menacing when framed right, and the seductive power of its cold, white, gorgeous threat is used to the full here. Iceland is as perfect a setting for a tale of impenetrable mystery and hellish human depravity as there can be on earth: from the mundanity of a kitchen-table interview to the shock of the discovery of a body trapped in ice, the dichotomies bite hard.

Stunning visual aesthetic aside, the engine of the show is Olin’s performance. Hulda Hermannsdottir is fierce, determined, compassionate and fixated on the truth, but also a weary warrior, at the end of a long career. With retirement looming, the piling of a complex web of murder and confrontation with the unimaginable depths of human nature would seem to be exactly what this overburdened woman does not need, the final straw on an overtaxed heart and mind. Olin portrays Hulda in all her varied facets, sadness deep and anger fiery, but also imbuing her with light and humour: a radiant smile that ensures Hulda does not end up a predictably one-dimensional portrait of a relentlessly dour and stoic Norse villain-catcher.

Predictability, though, is the danger with which The Darkness does tend to flirt. Devotees of Scandi noir are likely to find a lot that is familiar: the brutal crime, the grubby underbelly, the battles with authority, the pervading sense of gloomy foreboding. In a paradoxical way, part of what allows The Darkness to escape cliche is the way that its elements of standard Nordic crime drama are mixed in with a dash of similarly familiar vibes from Anglosphere cop shows.

In many of Hulda’s scenes where she rails against her boss, or crosses swords with her arrogant young partner, there’s more than a whiff of the classic American or British maverick cop trope – which would in itself be a tired cliche were it not being stirred into the dark waters of Icelandic doom-core. The fact that this mostly very Icelandic show is in English highlights the combination, while also making it, for better or worse, more accessible to audiences in our part of the world than some of its spiritual forebears.

You will not want to watch The Darkness if what you’re looking for is something groundbreaking – at this stage of history, is there even any ground to be broken in police procedurals anyway? What you’ll watch The Darkness for is strong, uncompromising storytelling, masterful acting from a lead in full control of her powers, and moments of utterly stunning visual filmmaking.

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