Stream It Or Skip It?

It’s not often that we recommend a mystery show where the mysteries being solved are only OK. But The Sommerdahl Murders has been an exception, mainly because of the checkered personal history that the main characters have had to deal with, all while working together to solve those mysteries. In its sixth season, though, much of that personal stuff doesn’t feel as compelling as it used to be.

Opening Shot: The seaside town of Elsinore gets ready for Sailing Week. A woman insists her husband and kids make a social media video for the family’s sail-making business.

The Gist: Louise Busck (Camilla Gottlieb) is in charge of social media for Busck sails, a company run by her husband Jannik (Peter Reichhardt). Later that day, at the opening party for Sailing Week, Louise is seen falling off her boat, and banging her head on a dinghy’s outboard motor, killing her.

Dan Sommerdahl (Peter Mygind) is spending a peaceful morning with his fiancée,  Josefine Sundby (Maibritt Saerens), as they continue to plan their upcoming wedding, when he gets a call about Louise’s body being found. Almost immediately, Jannik reports that his teenage son Karl (Mattias Brinch Nielsen), has gone missing. It seems that Dan and his police partner, Flemming Torp (André Babikian), suspect Karl right away, before they find out from Jannik that his son is a very routine-oriented person — he’s autistic, though he’s never been diagnosed.

In the meantime, Karl’s sister Frida (Rebekka Phillipson) goes ahead and participates in the sailing race that day, despite her mother’s death and her brother’s disappearance. Jannik doesn’t want her to race, but Frida’s grandparents, who used to run the sail-making company, insist for the sake of the brand.

Also in the meantime, Marianne Sommerdahl (Laura Drasbæk), Dan’s ex-wife, Flemming’s current significant other, and the police department’s forensics scientist, is still trying to process being kidnapped and held captive by Otto (Kurt Ravn). She gets very wistful, but doesn’t seem to be willing to talk to a therapist about it, as she ends up telling Flemming.

As Karl continues to be missing, Dan’s suspicions turn from the teenager to Jannik, mainly because he was seeking a divorce settlement that protected his family’s assets. There is also a robbery at the Busck home that Jannik didn’t even notice until Dan and Flemming point out a broken window to him.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Pick an Acorn TV mystery series, like The Madame Blanc Mysteries, and you can compare it to The Sommerdahl Murders, though Sommerdahl has a bit more in the way of continuing personal stories that fill in the mortar between each two-part murder mystery.

Our Take: We’ve never been fans of the mysteries that Dan Sommerdahl and company solve in any particular two-part episode, and in Season 6, that hasn’t changed. It feels that, for the most part, Dan and Flemming take wild guesses, point fingers and give underlings like Benjamin (Mathias Käki Jørgensen) and Nadia (Lise Baastrup) orders to get CCTV footage and look up things like records and other factual material. Most of the time, it seems that the info Benjamin and Nadia get is more pivotal to solving the case than anything Dan and Flemming come up with. Even in this mystery, the detectives are completely wrong until the very last second, when hard evidence discovered by Marianne tells them so.

The “meh” mysteries are always the main thrust of the episodes, even though the personal lives of Dan, Marianne and Flemming are the more interesting aspects of the show. That continues to be true, even though it seems most of the tension among the three main characters has dissipated with Dan’s engagement to Josefine and the trauma of Marianne’s abduction. The personal stakes feel lower this time around, though it seems that the sons of Josefine’s former boyfriend are going to come into play to disrupt wedding plans.

There are other personal stories, like Benjamin and Dan’s daughter Laura (Mia Højgaard) putting their son in daycare while Laura attends the academy. And Astrid (Thit AAberg) tries to go legit by opening a fish store, and gets help from the now-broke Arne Lind (Caspar Phillipson), but those stories get even less attention than the lives of the main three characters do.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: At the end of the first mystery, Josefine gets a surprise visit from the two boys she considers part of her family.

Sleeper Star: Lise Baastrup’s character Nadia needs to be promoted; she uncovers more breaks in each case than any of the other cops combined.

Most Pilot-y Line: Dan asks Flemming how he can be a better husband with Josefine than he was with Marianne. Uh, isn’t Flemming the wrong guy to ask?

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Sommerdahl Murders feels like it’s losing narrative steam in its sixth season, but we’re still on board because the personal stories of the main characters continues to make up for the not-so-great mysteries.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.