For scripted series based on true crime stories, it’s really tough to tell the story of the investigation of that crime if that investigation took years or even decades. There is just no way to show the passage of time without making things feel rushed. A new series about a notorious Swedish double murder that took 16 years to solve has just that problem.
THE BREAKTHROUGH: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A dad explains to his son how the hands of a watch move.
The Gist: In October 2004, a double murder took place in the town of Linköping, Sweden, which took 16 years to solve, thanks to the use of DNA genealogy, a technology not available 20 years ago. The Breakthrough is a fictionalized account of that investigation.
It starts with the stabbing on an 8-year-old boy named Adnan (Marley Norstad) as he was walking to school. When a woman named Gunilla (Anna Azcarate) came upon the grisly scene, she was also stabbed; she died in the hospital.
Police detective John Sudin (Peter Eggers) leads the investigation; given the weapon was found and there’s a witness named Karin (Annika Hallin) who saw the killer run right towards her as he fled the scene, John thinks that the killer will be found quickly. His wife Anna (Emelie Falk), who is nine months pregnant, hopes that’s the case, because she knows how all-consuming murder cases can be.
Then, a few problems arise. None of the DNA on the knife can be matched in their database, and — even more critically — Karin can’t seem to remember what the perpetrator’s face looks like. Even though he ran right towards her, the trauma of what she saw has made her blank out when it came to seeing his face.
As the weeks drag on, there doesn’t seem to be any breakthroughs in the case. John goes to Adnan’s family and asks if there were any religious reasons why he was stabbed in a certain spot, but his parents are basically offended at the question. When he employs the use of a hypnotist to help Karin, he knows he’s grasping at straws.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? We can pretty much pluck any scripted true crime series — like Under The Banner Of Heaven — and it will be comparable to The Breakthrough.
Our Take: Adapted by Oskar Söderlund from a book by Anna Bodin and Peter Sjölund, The Breakthrough attempts to encapsulate a 16-year investigation in 4 relatively short episodes. Yes, we get that there were likely stretches of time where nothing at all happened. But it does feel like the pace of the first episode is off, as it seems to speed along during the first months of the investigation in a way that makes it feel like only the first few days.
Much of the first episode shows John essentially getting nowhere on the case, and saying with supreme overconfidence more than once that they’ll get their main fairly quickly. We see some of the steps he and the local police took, including bringing in a profiler that made all sorts of conclusions about the killer that might have sent the investigation in unnecessary directions. The idea is that John’s home life is going to fall apart due to his obsession with the case, and that he’ll eventually connect with a genealogist named Per (Mattias Nordkvist), who will introduce him to the DNA databases that eventually IDed the killer.
We get the feeling that the somewhat underwritten first episode will lead to an overwritten second through fourth episode that speeds through time until John and Per meet. What we hope is that once that phase of the investigation gets going, the show will slow down and really get into how the relatively new technology of comparing DNA to genealogy databases has been so valuable in recent years.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: John listens intently as Karin starts to talk about the eyes of the killer while she’s under hypnosis.
Sleeper Star: Annika Hallin plays Karin, the witness who for some reason can’t remember the killer’s face. She wants to help and is confused why there’s a blank where his face should be, and she plays this confusion well.
Most Pilot-y Line: When people in town see John speed walking, they joke that he’s trying out for another Olympics. Perhaps there’s a bit of context there about John’s athletic history that we don’t know about.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Despite the fact that the show’s running time might over-compress the show’s narrative, The Breakthrough is still an interesting look at a murder that became the second biggest investigation in Sweden’s history.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
The post Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Breakthrough’ On Netflix, A Drama About A Real-Life Double Murder In Sweden That Took 16 Years To Solve appeared first on Decider.
