Sat 18 Jan 2020
A TV Episode Review: DICTE “Personskade , Part One.” (2013).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[5] Comments
DICTE “Personskade (Personal), Part One.” Miso Film/TV2 Danmark, 07 January 2013. 60m. Iben Hjejle (Dicte Svendsen), Lars Brygmann (John Wagner), Emilie Kruse, Dar Salim, Simon Krogh Stenspil. Based on characters in novels by Elsebeth Egholm. Director: Jannik Johansen.
The ending of this one really caught me by surprise. Not because it was a shocker or based on a twist that I didn’t see coming. No it’s a lot simpler than that, and I feel stupid by even bringing it up. I didn’t realize that the story was part one of two, and I wasn’t even watching the clock. Ha! on me.
But one thing’s for sure. As soon as I get done typing this, I’m going to go watch Part Two.
This is the first episode of three seasons of Dicte, consisting of five two-parters per season, or 30 episodes in all. (I probably could have left you to do the math). Dicte Svendsen, recently divorced, is a news reporter who has just moved back to her home town of Aarhus with her daughter Rose, a young lady who appears to be in the equivalent of high school in the US. She is certainly young enough that her mother has to keep a close eye on the friends she is making.
It is by accident, though, that Dicte begins her first brush with a big story. A young girl is found dead, murdered, her body mutilated in such a way that a botched Caesarean must have taken place, and Dicte is the first on the scene.
Photos taken by the news photographer accompanying her are the bargaining chips she needs for John Wagner, the police officer in charge of the case, to allow her to keep investigating the story.
There is a theme here. When younger, Dicte was forced by her parents to give up a child a soon as he was born; now Dicte has problems dealing with her daughter’s new male friend. And the girl who died, probably a prostitute, has forcibly lost the surrogate child she was carrying.
To me, actress Iben Hjejle seems too young to have such a long history behind her, but maybe that’s because I am much older than she. The story is a little darker than Death in Paradise, to take a recent example reviewed here, or The Invisibles, to pick another, but not not as ,much as Dexter or Hannibal here in the US. There will be Much more TV on my agenda this year, I can see that now.
January 18th, 2020 at 4:20 pm
I’ve been watching Sweden’s BECK on HULU and the original WALLENDER (not the Brannagh series) and gotten into a few other series from Scandinavia and find there is a quite a bit of quality in them. A few from France and Germany have impressed me so far as well.
I’ll certainly check this one out.
I’ve actually thought about subscribing to the MHZ streaming service just for the Bruno Cremar MAIGRET, MONTALBANO, and the Swedish spy series HAMILTON. There are some fine series coming out of Europe and the UK.
January 18th, 2020 at 4:46 pm
We started watching DICTE on Netflix, but after we finished the first series and started the second, Netflix dropped it. We ended up buying the boxed set on all three series.
Hjejle is 48. She has been in some English language movies, including HIGH FIDELITY and DEFIANCE. The show does get a little too soapy at times, but we enjoyed it.
January 18th, 2020 at 11:38 pm
Iben Hjejle was therefore 42 when the first season of DICTE began, and there are times she looks younger. But she was certainly old enough to have an 18 year old daughter, as sh does in the series, so you can consider me wrong abut that.
I’ll have to look into other things she’s done.
January 18th, 2020 at 11:42 pm
Note to David in Comment 1, DICTE is now showing on MHz, just another reason to sign up with them.
June 12th, 2020 at 11:35 pm
[…] country (Dicte, Denmark, and The Coroner, UK), and another divorced woman trying to make a go of it on her own in […]