Hidden Assets, The Promise and Funeral for a Dog

 

I thought this was one of the best detective dramas I have seen. We are in Shannon in Ireland where Detective Sergeant Emmer Berry( played by the luminous Angeline Ball) from the Criminal Assets Bureau, is leading an investigation into a stupidly rich drug dealer. She finds more than she bargained for. On the trail in Antwerp she meets Inspector Christian de Yong of the Belgium Counter Terrorism Unit. Their paths converge and the plot gets complicated. Partly in English and partly in Flemish with subtitles this is an original take on two police forces working in tandem. 

I didn't realise until later that the creator and writer of The Promise was Anne Landois who also wrote  Spiral (see earlier reviews). It stars Sofia Essaidi as a police officer leading a team searching for a missing girl. She is haunted by the case that starts the first episode where her dead father Pierre, twenty years ago, failed to solve the mystery of another missing girl. He appears in  the flashbacks which punctuate Sofia's case. The series was a huge hit in France and I could see why. 

Funeral for a Dog was a strange and surreal series ( the title is the name of the book written by one the characters, Mark Svensson). It is the journalist  Daniel Mandelkern who travels to the Italian side of Lake Lugarno ( wonderful setting if nothing else) in search of a story and it is there he meets Tuuli and Mark who are reluctant to spill the beans on the death of Felix, the other member of these "close" friends. We see, in extensive flashbacks (probably more than those in real time) how those three met and their developing relationships. 

The series is adapted from the book by Thomas Pletzinger and is just as exasperating. The constant flash backs are all over the place, occasionally we are told when, but not very often. Eight episodes was far too many, I'm not quite sure how I stuck it. In the last episode, for example, there is a short flash forward that seems crazily out of place. Fortunately the Swedish detective series Beck is just starting so looking forward to that.