Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Netflix’s latest foreign original series, Borderliner is as dark and atmospheric as Scandi-noir comes, but it’s also elegantly beautiful and extremely tense. It’s less a study in crime than a look at what compels people to betray their own morals. And it’s all about how an honorable cop does a corrupt thing for what he thinks is the right reason — and how that choice spirals out of control.
Borderliner opens at the end of one murder investigation. We learn that a police informant named Elisabeth Lund was killed by her handler, a popular detective named Sven Lindberg. The case was only cracked it seems because our “hero,” Nikolai Andraessen, decided to blow the whistle on his colleague. Since the trial is coming up, and not everyone in his unit is thrilled about the case, Nikolai is put on leave and told to get out of town. Good guy Nikolai decides to visit his brother Lars, a troubled cop and father, for a spell and, what do you know, he immediately gets drawn into a murder investigation involving his family and all his old hometown acquaintances.
The case involves the a murder of a local man that’s been dressed up like a suicide. Nikolai initially believes he’s doing his hungover brother a favor tagging along on the gig, and he thinks he’s just offering a helping hand tagging the crime as a possible murder, but he actually is setting up the central drama of Borderliner: after being roped into the murder investigation, Nikolai has to make a choice about whether or not he should cover up his brother’s crime. After he does, he starts to learn that his seemingly contrite brother might have been misleading him, his enigmatic father could be involved, and that more is plaguing his hometown than he would have believed. Fun, tense stuff, right?
Borderliner has the benefit of being a lot of great things at once: it’s a crackling Scandinavian crime thriller, a serious family drama, and a bit of a sexy conspiracy story. It’s also beautifully shot — never before have the depressing forests of Norway seemed so lush and lovely. And it’s got a fantastic cast. Tobias Santelmann (The Last Kingdom, Kon-Tiki) depicts Nikolai’s internal anguish as a sort of deep heartbreak. And Nikolai’s heart is broken! His brother has betrayed him and forced him to betray himself.
Nikolai is also in the closet. That is, he’s got a loving boyfriend back home – Elisabeth’s brother!! WHAT IS THAT SCANDAL?? — but it doesn’t seem that his brother or any of the comely ladies in town know this. It makes for a lot of ironic flirtation scenes where ladies like Nikolai’s new partner, Anniken, banter with him as though they might be angling for a date. While it’s possible he’s bisexual, it seems that Borderliner is setting up Nikolai’s “secret” love life as it’s own plot point.
Like all the best crime dramas, Borderliner seeds important details so subtly that you’ll likely want to go back rewatch scenes to make sure you don’t miss clues. And since it’s only eight episodes long, you know it’s going make for a great binge (or re-binge).
