Belgium in Salamander is not the chocolate-box Belgium people like to imagine. This is not a soft postcard of pretty squares, waffles and romantic old buildings. This is Belgium behind closed doors. Offices. Banks. Files. Families with names that carry weight. Men in suits who look calm because they have spent their whole lives hiding panic.
The series begins with a robbery, but not the usual kind. It is not really about money. That is what makes it interesting. A private bank is broken into, and the safe-deposit boxes of some very powerful people are opened. What is stolen is not only jewellery or cash. It is secrets. The kind of secrets that can destroy careers, marriages, reputations and whole political lives.
And suddenly Belgium becomes a map of fear.
What I liked about Salamander is that it understands something very simple: power is often quiet. It does not always shout. It does not always come with violence straight away. Sometimes it sits in a boardroom. Sometimes it signs papers. Sometimes it drinks coffee while deciding who is useful and who has become a problem.
At the centre of it all is Paul Gerardi, the detective who does not belong to that world but has to walk straight into it. He is not glamorous. He is not polished. He has that tired, stubborn look of someone who already knows the truth will cost him something. I like detectives like that. The ones who are not trying to look clever. The ones who keep going because something inside them will not let them stop.
Brussels here feels serious and heavy. Not ugly, but guarded. The city is filmed in a way that makes you feel there are layers everywhere. Streets, government buildings, old institutions, private rooms. Everything has a front and a back. What people show, and what they hide.
That is where Salamander works best. It is not just a crime story. It is a story about a country where the past is not really past. Old decisions still breathe. Old guilt still moves through families and institutions. The crimes are modern, but the roots feel older.
Belgium becomes the perfect place for this kind of drama because it sits in the middle of Europe, quietly important, politically complex, full of languages, borders and histories. It is not loud about itself. And that quietness gives the story its tension.
There is something cold about Salamander, but not empty. More like a polished surface with rot underneath. You watch it and feel that everyone knows more than they are saying. Every conversation has another conversation underneath it.
For my Belgium section, Salamander belongs there because it shows a different side of European crime drama. Not forests, not seaside towns, not sunny villages. This is institutional darkness. The crime is not in an alley. It is in the safe deposit box. In the handshake. In the family name. In the silence people protect for years.
And sometimes that is more frightening.
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