Annika

Peter McGinn9/10

Sep 23, 2021

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The punch line is that I enjoyed the show and would recommend you give it a try, a few episodes to better appreciate it. I saw a lot of one-star reviews on this show. Usually that signals unhappiness due to racism or anger at having diversity in characters after 70 years of all straight white men all the time, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here. So I will address a few of the complaints. Tired of detectives with messy personal lives and especially stroppy teenagers. Okay, I will admit I was pleased with the Rowan Atkinson version of Maigret because Finally a detective had a good marriage. But as for this show, I wonder how many of the reviewers who pointed that out were a bit stroppy themselves as teenagers? Plus if they had watched more than one show or part of one show, they would have seen realistic slow growth in the character and their damaged relationship. If anything, I think Annika’s team is a bit stroppy, and the series works on that, also. Some also didn’t like her talking directly to the camera. I will make another admission that I became tired of this technique in Atypical, the only little thing that bothered me on that great program, but I don’t mind it in this show. It brings out Annika’s witty side and illustrates she is well read. And I loved how they used it late in the final episode. Others moaned about weak plots and dialogue, etc., but I didn’t see that. Now I think it might have benefited from being 90 minutes. The cases wrap up almost hastily sometimes in the hour format. A lot of shows develop one case all season long. Some people seemed to want Nicola Walker to reprise her role from Unforgotten, but that is too silly to comment on. Others liked some original radio version and were fixated on that. (I believe the tv version was adapted by the same guy, so what’s up with that?) As a side note, I usually do okay with Scottish accents, but at times characters talked fast or mumbled and I had a little trouble. My version had no captions for some reason. So, yeah, I enjoyed the show and hope they renew it.

Annika is a touch above the usual conveyor belt, crime drama's we have come to expect from the UK. The key to its success, is its not afraid to be intelligent and witty. The key character often launches into what the world of drama call, asides. A dramatic technique, often associated with Shakespearean productions, where a character steps outside of the play and addresses the audience, directly. Its interesting to see this technique utilised in this context and oddly, it works. That's because Annika typically has something engaging, to say. By contrast, the crimes Annika and her team solve, are fairly pedestrian. Its a shame they could not have come up with intelligent tales to match the well crafted, characterisations. While we are on the subject, why is it almost every episode, the criminal or an accomplice, tries to run away? The other downside is the predictable woke-ness, on display. Its understandable people find it tiresome. I, for one, have no issues with alternative life styles, etc but its not even remotely, representative of life for most people. Why incessantly try to pretend, it is? In summary, a better than average UK crime drama that would have been better again, had the crime tales, been as ably rendered, as the characterisations.

This was my second show with this actress as the main character and I spent a lot of the first season wondering if she has a vibe she’s typecast in. And I am not usually one for the breaking of the fourth wall in this way, but it grew on me by the end of the third episode. I definitely wish there was more.