Jo Nesbo's Harry Hole (Netflix)
Netflix's Harry Hole brings Jo Nesbo's detective to life with raw intensity
Rating: * Rating: 2/5
What would it be like, to be inside the mind of a bestselling author - to see their characters and their settings with all the added detail of their creator's imagination?
The dark and violent Scandi crime drama Harry Hole offers exactly that. Jo Nesbo, the Norwegian superstar novelist, has adapted his mega-selling series of thrillers about an Oslo policeman. . . and lost none of the sordid, brutish atmosphere of the original stories.
We get to discover exactly how he imagines Harry to look, with his tortured mannerisms and brusque demeanour.
We meet his long-suffering colleagues face to face, and his girlfriend Rakel with her troubled son, Oleg.
We get to look into the eyes of Harry's nemesis, the narcissistic psychopath Tom Waaler.
And the result is oddly disappointing. The pictures on the screen add little to the pictures Nesbo has already conjured on the page.
But there's so much more in the complex, psychologically layered books that cannot be translated to television.
This is Harry Hole for people who don't have the time or the inclination to read the novels.
Nesbo is a meticulous writer, whose work shows a remarkable consistency of tone and description.
So it's little surprise he has maintained complete control over this Netflix adaptation, supplying the entire nine-part screenplay.
A former rock musician, Nesbo does insist on a punchy soundtrack, by Nick Cave.
But he falls into the obvious trap of trying to squeeze his entire vision into the first episode.
Instead of Harry's world and his past being allowed to reveal themselves gradually, we get everything served up in the first half hour: his alcoholism, the fatal blunder that wrecked his career, his difficult childhood, his fear of romantic commitment, the loyalty he inspires in colleagues, the lot.
It feels like being buttonholed in a pub by a man who insists on unloading his entire life story before you can even get to the bar.
Hole has appeared on screen before, in the 2017 film The Snowman, with Michael Fassbender.
That movie felt derivative, a cynical copy of other Scandinavian murder mysteries. A decade later, Nesbo's vision is starting to look outdated - much as the recent version of Patricia Cornwell's Scarpetta did on Amazon Prime. Serial killers and their terrified female victims have become passe.
One problem that mars the books is even more stark here: it's hard to understand why Harry's fellow detectives, and especially his bosses, are so infinitely patient with him.
He's proud of being charmless, and his contempt for the rules that bind everyone else often seems like crass arrogance. Why do they tolerate him?
But we do get to hear how that Norwegian name should be pronounced. It's 'Hooler', not 'Hole'. At least his mother didn't call him Lars.
