Karin Lossow is back helping solve crimes in Usedom as Nordic Murders returns to Channel 4’s streaming service Walter Presents. While season four felt a little off-kilter with so much focus on the love life of police detective Ellen Norgaard (Rikke Lylloff), season five feels like a return to form for this popular German crime show, which has been a favourite with Crime Fiction Lover readers since it first appeared with subtitles back in 2020.
Three new feature-length episodes will be available to watch on Walter Presents from 18 October.
Former prosecutor Karin (played by Katrin Sass) is the central character. With Ellen away in Hamburg, Karin’s nephew Reiner Witt (Till Firit) leads the police investigations. Karin is lodging with him and somehow finds ways to help solve cases even though she’s meant to keep out of police business. She may remind you a little of Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote.
Usedom is the area of Northeast Germany just next to Poland and directly south of Sweden, and the production makes the most of the varied Nordic-like landscapes on offer. There’s the beach, marina, plenty of fields, towns dotted along the coast, even crossing into Poland, but this story begins in a wintry forest where Karin and her dog Lucky find three dead Alsatian puppies. If that wasn’t macabre enough, nurse Jana Leppin has gone missing from her home on the seafront, with significant loss of blood.
Witt and his team focus their attention on the woman’s strange neighbour, Herr Klose, an ex-con survivalist with a violent past and an Alsatian. Klose has been teaching the missing woman’s daughter survival skills in the forest – right near where those puppies were discovered. The mystery in episode one is further complicated when it turns out that one of the terminally ill old men that Jana Leppin cared for has an unusual will, and is dying after coming into contact with banned pesticides.
The case takes a curious turn when Karin tries to seek justice for the puppies on social media, and Klose breaks cover and escapes into the woods. A body is discovered and one of Klose’s past victims emerges and seems to be forming a friendship with Karin.
Strands of the first episode extend into the next one, which involves human trafficking across the Polish border into Germany and the death of a young girl, which extends into the third episode of season five. Witt must rescue Karin, who gets into trouble in Poland, and get to the bottom of the murder and the smuggling syndicate, while also dealing with a revenge mission by one of the victims in the case.
Well acted and with intelligent plot lines, season five improves on Karin’s last outing. The tone is more even too, and while the themes are serious there are lighter moments – for example the banter between the uniform cops Holm (Rainer Sellien) and Mertens (Jana Julia Roth), who badly mess up a stakeout at Klose’s compound.
In Germany, these episodes aired under the show’s proper title Der Usedom-Krimi in 2023. While the title Nordic Murders isn’t strictly accurate, the show does at times feel similar to Wallander, which was set in southern Sweden.
US viewers can watch the first four seasons of Nordic Murders on Prime / PBS Masterpiece here.
