Scandinavian detectives use their intellect to solve crimes while their American counterparts have technology as their Dr Watson. Who finds the best clues?
The old age complaint was that there was nothing to watch on the telly. The modern equivalent is that there is too much detective drama – most television channels are dishing out whodunits for first course, mains and dessert. But it’s not really a complaint because we’re lapping it up – from Wallander and Sherlock Holmes remakes to The Killing, Dexter, Homeland and all the variations of CSI, we just can’t get enough.
In Wallander, it’s the detective’s grey matter that solves murders not technology
Blame it on the US. When NBC first aired Law and Order in 1990, no one could have predicted that a legal drama would have enough steam to last for two decades. Yet last it did – not only that, but it also served to whet our appetite for more detective drama. What followed was the golden age of US small screen whodunits – produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, CSI has been around for more than a decade and has spawned Miami and New York spin-offs.
For the more bloodthirsty of viewers, we’ve had eight seasons of Dexter. And it’s not just mainstream, commercial drama either – created and written by David Simon, The Wire was the almost perfect combination of tightly woven plot and elevated acting. And we say ‘almost’ because its only fault is that it only lasted five seasons.
But it’s not the US alone that has the lead role in detective drama on the telly. In recent years, Scandinavian countries have become a veritable powerhouse of murder and mystery.
Published posthumously, Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy took the world by storm. Originally written in Swedish, the trilogy has to date sold more than 70 million copies, graced the small and big screen, and turned its main character, Lisbeth Salander, into a modern heroine.
Larsson’s success encouraged us to turn our attention to the icy north – and what a treasure trove of detective drama we found. From The Killing and The Bridge to Wallander and Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole series, Nordic noir has taken over and keeps us spine-chilling company during our television and reading time.
Yet while giving us plenty of criminal pleasure, US and Scandinavian whodunits follow contrasting clues. And it all boils down to one main difference – the use of technology in solving crimes.
American detective drama beeps and whirrs with technology. Take CSI for instance – it’s all shot against a three-dimensional, flashy green and orange backdrop.
Investigators analyse a crime scene using the kind of technology that is still somewhere in the future. And when a murder is committed, Horatio Crane (David Caruso), Calleigh (Emily Procter) and Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise) just throw all their evidence at a giant touchscreen wall and come up with possible scenarios. It’s tech wizardry that helps solve crimes.
The same goes for Dexter. While the blood spatter expert (Michael C. Hall) metes out justice using an old-fashioned knife, he has an arsenal of technology to crosshair his sights on a criminal.
Even an alternative series like The Wire is steeped in technology – the title itself is an unmissable clue. Detectives Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West), Lester Freamon (Clarke Peters) and Bunk Moreland (Wendell Pierce) use phone tapping to bring down drug barons Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris) and Stringer Bell (Idris Elba).
On the other hand, Scandinavian detective drama is more traditional and harks back to a time when detectives relied on their intellect to solve crimes. In fact, series like The Killing and Wallander follow the same structure as Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue, which is widely considered to be the first detective story.
The structure is basic but effective – you have the detective who uses rational, scientific thought combined with creativity to solve crimes fuelled by passion, madness or money. It’s the same pattern which was formalised by Tzvetan Todorov’s 1966 essay The Typology of Detective Fiction.
Such a vintage approach is to be expected because, unlike what we might assume, Scandinavian detective fiction has been successful since the 1960s, when Swedish couple Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö sat down to write the Martin Beck series. They planned it like a perfect murder – they would spend 10 years writing 10 books. Each book would have 30 chapters and all would feature the middle-aged, unprepossessing detective Martin Beck from Stockholm’s National Homicide Department. The resulting 10 books became classics of the thriller genre and have changed the way we look at detectives.
What makes Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s output the finest crime series ever is that more than 50 decades later, Roseanna, The Man on the Balcony and all the rest of the books have survived and maintained the same freshness they had when they were first published.
And it all boils down to the fact that murders are solved through intellect alone. There are no cameras, monitors or gadgets in sight – the only form of technology that makes an appearance is the landline.
Other modern Scandinavian creations have the same absence of technology. In The Killing, what shines through the blood and gore is Sarah Lund’s (Sofie Gråbøl) beautiful mind. In the BBC’s Wallander, adapted from Swedish novelist Henning Mankell’s Wallander novels, it’s the melancholic detective’s grey matter that solves murders, not technology. Of course, both Lund and Wallander use their mobile phones, but only to communicate rather than to solve crimes. So does Harry Hole, the protagonist in Norwegian novelist Jo Nesbo’s novels – Hole does have a friend at a telecommunications company to help him out, but in the end, it’s his rebel mind that does the sleuthing work.
Even the setting of most Nordic noirs is barren of technology. In The Killing, computers are basic models, while in Wallander, the landscape is a barren, beautiful natural landscape where the only form of technology are the electricity poles. In the Danish-Swedish collaboration The Bridge, the actual Oresund bridge that connects Copenhagen with Malmo soars above the two cities as a tribute to what man and technology can build. But in the end, it’s just a crime scene.
By now you’ll probably want to know which we like best. Well, this is detective drama we’re talking about, so it’s up to you to find out.