author Kristen Houghton
Oh the joy of binge-watching! Everyone has been talking about a show that you’ve promised yourself you’d “get to,” but somehow never have the time when the episodes are actually aired. But the appeal of the shows and your friends’ enthusiastic reviews are making you anxious to see what it’s all about. It’s time to binge-watch!
If you’re up for a drama that has had people praising it for its gritty, dark, and captivating storyline, you might try The Killing, both the original Danish one, Forbrydelsen as well as the American version.
Forbysdelsen is the show that began our obsession with Nordic noir. Sofie Grabol is excellent playing Detective Inspector Sarah Lund who works doggedly and tenaciously to find the killer of a young woman. Her life revolves around her obsession with finding the killer and her relationships with her mother, boyfriend, and child fall by the wayside.
Her American counterpart in The Killing, Mireille Enos as Detective Sarah Linden is also superb as she single-mindedly pursues the killer of 17 year-old Rosie Larsen. Linden also loses positive relationships in her life in her dogged pursuit of justice. Both versions are dark dramas and take place in a world where it seems to be constantly cold and rainy but that only adds to the atmosphere of fear and tension.
If Brit drama, Brummie accents and all, is to your liking, then the show Peaky Blinders, a gangland style of thugs set in Birmingham, England in the 1920’s is for you. I was turned onto this series by a friend who lives in Leicester. She explained that the title refers to the flat caps worn by the characters. They were so called because of the hidden razor blades concealed in the bills which turned the headgear into weapons. Cillian Murphy stars as crime boss Tommy Shelby a racketeer in post WW I. As a cruel man in this post-war time period, he is mesmerizing. He and his gang are more than equal to the characters and brutality evidenced in the movie Gangs of New York.
The American-based show, Sons of Anarchy is patterned after, of all things, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, so you can bet it’s going have elements of revenge and pathos in the stories. This series follows an outlaw biker gang as they run drugs, guns, and ride roughshod over other gangs. It is The Godfather on steroids. Topics such as government corruption, vigilantism, and racism are well written. This outlaw motorcycle club is an analogy for the transformation of the human soul. Starring Charlie Hunnam, Katey Sagal,,Ron Perlman, and Drea de Matteo, it will capture your attention by the end of the first episode and the binge-watch will commence.
There are many excellent shows to binge-watch. A few recommendations, besides the ones already mentioned, are the following: Dexter, House of Cards, Breaking Bad, Sherlock, and Homeland. Break out the popcorn and get started!
Kristen Houghton’s new novel, Unrepentant: Pray for Us Sinners, book 3 in her best-selling series, A Cate Harlow Private Investigation has been voted one of the top five novels by International Mystery Writers.
Houghton is the author of nine novels, two non-fiction books, a collection of short stories appearing in anthologies, and a children’s novella and is hard at work on a new series that features a paranormal investigator with distinct, untried powers of her own.