Expected more

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

To fans of the series, "Gunvald" will be forever identified with the episode in which Beck's popular sidekick (Mikael Persbrandt) bows out.In fact, he doesn't have much to do, other than investigate a case alone, walk slowly around an apartment and receive fatal wounds to the brain as a result. For the remainder of his on screen time we see him lying in a hospital bed wired up to a series of tubes until his brain finally gives out.We might be sad for his passing, but director Mårten Klingberg has offered plenty of convincing material in an unusually downbeat episode. The central villain a gangster promising to go straight (Peter Franzén) is a thoroughly unattractive character who would even put his own son's safety at risk in search of profit. His enemies are equally likely to kill or maim, even if they know that Beck's police officers are after them.Much of the action takes place in ill-lit sheds, or small, poky rooms, where the characters' faces are seldom shown in full profile. Their language is often coarse - much more so than in previous episodes - drawing our attention to the basic desperation of their plight. In this kind of amoral environment, deaths such as Gunvald's are accepted as a way of life; his colleagues can be briefly sorry, but they still have to continue the job of bringing people to justice as best they can.This series has still plenty of dramatic life left in it, as it continues to examine the plight of basically good law enforcement officers placed in extreme situations.

When a journalist is found murdered suspicion initially falls on various right wing individuals who had sent him death threats. Other suspects emerge though; the husband of the colleague he may have had an affair with and a violent criminal, Risto Kangas, whose fingerprints were found at the scene. Things develop quickly when Gunvald goes to question a potential witness to the crime; an unknown man who already got there and is attempting to kill the witness shoots and seriously wounds Gunvald. While the team search for Kangas we learn the real reason he was seeing the journalist… he was planning to go straight and was working on a book that would expose his criminal associates; something that they clearly wish to stop. As time progresses Beck's team comes under pressure from above and the criminals take desperate measures in an attempt to get their hands on the dead journalist's missing computer.This, the first episode of the sixth series, has a solid central mystery as well as the shock of having a major character seriously injured in a shooting… an event that will clearly have ongoing repercussions in future episodes. The tension it causes within the team brings other members to the centre of the story; most notably Oskar, who should have been with Gunvald at the time. There are several threatening moments and an exciting concluding shoot out. The cast do a solid job as their characters deal with the case as well as the potential loss of one of their colleagues. Overall I found this to be a good episode but wonder how the events will affect future stories.