Discovering Europe through television
Discovering Europe through television
There is a particular moment when you start watching enough international television and realise that the programmes you remember most are rarely the ones trying hardest to impress you. They are the ones that look like somewhere. A Welsh house…
Women in crime drama have slowly moved from supporting the investigation to leading it, reflecting a much bigger social change: the right not only to enter the room, but to be trusted as the smartest person in it.
Small towns make perfect crime drama settings because familiarity can be just as dangerous as anonymity. Everyone knows everyone — or thinks they do — and old histories, local loyalties and shared secrets can turn even the quietest community into a place where there is nowhere to hide.
Place in crime drama is never just background. It shapes how people live, how crimes unfold, how detectives investigate and how stories stay with us. From Icelandic isolation to the narrow streets of Genoa, the best locations do more than look beautiful — they become part of the story itself.
Music is part of a place just as much as architecture, language or landscape. When European crime drama uses local artists, sounds and cultural references, a city feels lived in rather than simply filmed. The right soundtrack does not just accompany the story — it helps tell us where that story belongs.
Original language is part of the setting. From the rhythm of a Spanish conversation to the pauses in a Scandinavian interrogation room, the actor’s real voice carries place, culture and performance in a way dubbing never quite can. For me, subtitles are not a barrier — they are part of the journey.
The best crime dramas don't invite us to feel sorry for these characters.
They invite us to imagine a world that would be poorer without them.
I often describe Nordic noir as a university rather than simply another school of crime drama.
Everything else may have taught us how to solve the crime.
Scandinavia taught us how to feel it.
This is where crime television learned to trust the cold. To trust grey skies, long pauses, ordinary kitchens, tired faces, empty roads, snow, rain, bureaucracy, guilt and silence. It showed Europe that a crime drama does not have to run after explosions, glamour or clever one-liners. It can sit with grief. It can look at society. It can ask what kind of country produces this kind of crime.