Helsinki Crimes (TV Series 2022– ) Poster

(2022– )

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6/10
Watchable butt not great
andrew-612-76161114 March 2023
I'm intrigued by two issues that keep repeating in this series. Almost as if the writers had a purpose in making this other than the just making a tv show show.

The first is that the police in Finland are grossly underpaid. There are constant references to senior police almost living in poverty, unable to look after their families.

There is also an obsession with the claim that junior offenders don't get punished there. In many scenes the offenders are arrested and lean back unaffected and say "it's ok I'm underage - I'll just get off with community service"

I felt like screaming at the tv "just record the conversation and play it to the judge!"

Many of the issues concerning the privates lives of the police are just bland and uninteresting as if they just felt the need to throws that in.
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7/10
Slow but gets under your skin
Gerben_Hoetink16 May 2023
A bleak portrayal of Helsinki. The series evolve around the crimes of Finlands capitol and the empathetic homicide detective Timo Harjunpää who tries very hard not to take the darkness he encounters while at work, back home to his family. The series come off to a slow start but the characters slowly get under your skin. Although I can understand that some might find the stories of the Helsinki crimes boring and unimaginative, in my belief they are realistic and a well-made portrayal of the sometimes tedious and strenuous day-to-day work of a homicide squad under pressure. Yes, it lacks sensational plot twists and bombastic action, but it gains in depth over time. Just like in the real world, you got to give it time to get to know someone. I give the first half of season 1 a solid 6, the second half a well deserved 7.
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7/10
An ordinary daily life
teophne8 March 2023
The family matters and stuff outside the actual cases are pretty ordinary Finnish stuff; nothing too fancy or shiny but exactly as you'd imagine things to be. The cases themselves aren't too special either, maybe slightly over the top when it comes to local crime culture. Not saying these things don't happen here but let's say these aren't that common in regular police work in Finland.

Overall looks and feels like a Finnish police show; a bit of a low-key ordinary police work, but clearly not aimed for worldwide audience. That must have been an afterthought. Subtitles lose a lot in translation but they're still passable.

The original TV show based on the books was filed in the eighties and it also was a depiction of that day's policework.
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6/10
Silent Witness Helsinki
williampgriffiths13 July 2023
Disturbing police procedural portraying the dark and gritty underbelly of society. Very reminiscent of Silent Witness stories if you put aside the pathology aspect, the series has a focus on the motivations of the perpetrators and what drives them to commit their crimes. The novels the series is based on were mostly written in the 80's by a serving sergeant in the Helsinki violent crime unit providing fictionalised accounts of the cases he worked on.

Don't expect inspired deductive work from the detectives though, these are by the numbers police officers who spend most of their time grumbling about their working hours and failing to respond with urgency when given leads that could prevent further crimes.
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6/10
Bleak Finland
geoffreyawhite31 July 2022
Very depressing series with depresses characters. Helsinki need a PR team to counter balance this show. Each two part crime is seedy with unlikeable characters and a team of police who generally stumble upon DNA or an eyewitness to solve the crime. So many other cop shows do it better.such as Thin Blue Line from Sweden.
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4/10
Missed Potential
ClockworkPomegranate16 August 2022
Warning: Spoilers
Harjunpää (known as 'Helsinki Crimes' in the English-speaking world) is a cop show set in Helsinki, Finland that has some interesting lead characters but ends up being just another generic police versus criminals show. The second episode with the psychotic ambulance driver is particularly cringe. It seems the producers tried to make a "ripped from the headlines" story featuring an 'incel' ambulance driver/video game producer and how he turns his violent misogynist fantasies into murderous reality. But they seem to have forgotten that the hype over incels turned killers is a few years old now and always was blown out of proportion, not to mention that murderous incels was a North American thing only.

Crime dramas from the Nordic countries often have an overt feminist subtext and while this is, to an extent, a reflection of modern Western society it does sometimes go over-the-top and this episode really pushes the men = bad, women = good trope. Why is portraying young men who have never been in a relationship or have difficulties relating to women as deranged misogynist losers acceptable when it is no longer okay, for good reason, to denigrate women or ethnic minorities? In real life such men (and boys) tend to be unhappy, depressed and lonely.

Also, this episode is so unsubtle that it veers into the ridiculous. The video game is called 'Masculine Power' and the murderer name drops Elliot Rogers, the American incel spree killer, as if the series' producers think their audience is a bit stupid and needs everything spelled out for them.

The other episodes that I've watched so far are standard police dramas with stereotypical cops that are married to their work and have little time to be parents or romantic partners. The storyline involving the two killer teenagers in episode 3 is also a bit strange as we are given no compelling reason why they turned into murderers. They have neglectful parents and a dysfunctional home life but why does that drive them to kill for fun? Revealing at the end that one kids was the son of a police officer adds nothing to the story.

Like so many shows in this genre Harjunpää,/Helsinki Crimes tries too hard to be "realistic" but it ends up being a collection of Nordic cop show stereotypes with an unsubtle and embarrassingly obvious didactic component.

It's watchable and mildly entertaining if one doesn't expect too much...but that's about it.
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1/10
Utterly generic garbage
stairways7 March 2023
Generic characters. Generic glass cop station offices. Generic good guy detective. Generic cool tough female partner (still sufficiently eye candy). Generic concerned boss (he's working too hard). Generic (ie utterly shallow) bad guy incel computer gamer who's also, obviously, a generic rapist (attacking generic lone women on generic parkway paths after dark). Generic forensics team. Generic cityscape night shots. Generic dumb uniformed cops. Generic beautiful spouse and kids. Generic soundtrack. Generic dialogue (ok, make that sub-generic). If you like your hot food gone cold and your cool drinks tepid and flat, you'll love this.
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3/10
Gave up halfway through episode three
laduqesa2 April 2022
It's not a format I like, that we see the murderers at the beginning of the episodes and then watch the supposed detective work to catch them. As this TV series is based on a series of crime novels, I assume that this is the system used in the books. In either medium, this would be a deficiency to me.

I can guess at why it was done this way. Both of the stories I watched (it's one story per two episodes) involved or less random crimes. It would be really hard for a viewer to guess at whodunnit. Agatha Christie this is not, it's more like Columbo which I also never took to.

I loved seeing parts of Helsinki that I know or have been to which is why I gave a three. But I just knew that I have better things lined up to watch which is why I deleted the lot.
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1/10
This is not it
paavoilo17 February 2023
Weird camera work, like handheld and randomly out of focus. Maybe it's a art-thing but I doubt it. It's like watching a commercial of dishwasher tablets.

There is no way of knowing if acting is any good, because show cuts every 3-5 seconds. Writing is not anything to write about.

Finland has limited supply of actors, all of them had been doing something else while this show was casted.

For some reason they had a car chase between an electric Wolksvagen and a scooter. That was the best part and it looked like some ones high school project.

Olga Temomen does a great job acting like this was a christian after school special.

Maybe the books are better?
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2/10
Seen it all before
gurumaggie1 March 2023
It's been done better and in a more interesting way, this hackneyed plot that has painting by numbers characters, one dimensional and incredibly dull.

You don't have to be Hercule Poirot to see the next telegraphed cliché coming as the plot clunks along like a broken toy car, have we had so much good scandi stuff now we are getting the Poundland stuff, ch 4 has had some real clunkers recently I'm wondering if Walter needs a rest from TV and a Netflix subscription? I couldn't get through episode one I was too bored by the standard of the script, we need something light hearted in this current world.
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2/10
Not worth your time
enamacic19 March 2023
There is so much lacking that I'm not sure where to start.

There is hardly any in-depth character development - at all.

Which seems to be both due to script as well as storyline as well as a lack of ability of the actors.

There is no real suspense buildup of any kind and you're kinda left scratching your head at what's "happening" - or not.

I honestly gave it a fair shot but was mostly left with a lot of question marks throughout every episode & generally underwhelmed.

I would call it amateuristic but an amateur series can still be good. This serie just shows a lack of talent imho and I wonder how no one was honest enough to tell the maker(s) during the proces.
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