Johan Falk Trilogy

johan falk trilogy

My wife is a big fan of British crime stories and period dramas. I like them too but she likes to put them on while she’s crafting or sewing doll clothes (have I mentioned she’s a doll collector? and that she makes super cool costumes for them?). Which means she watches a lot of them.

We cut the cord years ago but try to limit our streaming choices down to one service per person in our family. Recently she was subscribed to BritBox, which like it sounds, contains lots of British programming. But she’s ready to switch to something else. I’ve been trying to talk her into giving MHZ a try of late. They have a lot of interesting shows from European countries that are not England.

I used to get a lot of DVDs from them and generally enjoyed what they sent. I’ve posted several of those reviews here lately and this is another one. Johan Falk was actually a pretty long-running Swedish series, but for whatever reason, MHZ packaged three of the films as a trilogy. It is pretty good. You can read my full review here.

Detective Montalbano: Episodes 23-26

detective montalbano

For a brief period, I was reviewing a lot of international crime dramas from around the world, all released by a company called MHZ. The shows were usually good, the DVDs were pretty bare-boned, and the cover art was often terrible. I mean just look at this image. My daughter has better design skills, and she’s only 11. It looks like someone took a random screenshot and then added the most generic-looking text on top of it and called it a day.

The show, as you can read in this review, was pretty good.

Beck: Volume 7 & 8

beck tv

I’m never entirely sure how I should title these posts where I’m just linking to reviews I did for Cinema Sentries. I suppose I should research the best possible SEO way to capture Google searches or something. But I never was good at that sort of thing. Beck is a Swedish detective series that I apparently thought was pretty good. I watched it and wrote the review back in 2013 so my memory is sketchy at best. I’ve since read one of the books in the series and felt basically the same about it – ’tis good but not great.

Detective De Luca

detective de luca

I love a good crime drama. There is something very satisfying about watching someone try to solve a murder or some other heinous crime. The conventions of the genre are somehow comforting as you more or less know what is going to happen (a crime will be committed, questions will be asked, and the criminal will be caught). The best stories find ways to subvert those conventions and do something interesting.

I also love that crime dramas work well all over the world. Just about every culture that makes movies and TV shows makes crime dramas. MHZ used to put out a lot of DVDs of crime dramas and mysteries from all across Europe and other countries. They might still do that, I’ve just lost touch with them. I know they do have a streaming service and I’ve been meaning to give it a try.

Detective de Luca is a cool little series of detective movies from Italy. I reviewed it several years ago and now you can read my thoughts here.