Although it’s set in Germany and Poland and isn’t Scandinavian at all, Nordic Murders has been one of the most watched overseas crime shows on Channel 4’s streaming service, Walter Presents. Now, season six is available to and with it come five new cases for former prosecutor Karin Lossow.
Karin is played by Katrin Sass, and comes with quite a back story. Season one began with her release from prison after serving time for murdering her husband. She arrived back and had to make amends with her daughter, Julia Thiel, a police detective. Early in season two, something terrible happened to Julia which we’re not sure has really been addressed in the subsequent episodes and seasons. That’s about to change.
At a Crossroads, the first episode of season six, opens in midwinter on the isle of Usedom and Karin is having bad dreams. She envisages herself shooting Karol Zielínski, a Polish gangster – now a respectable businessman – who was heavily involved in what happened to Julia. Shotgun. Kapow. Then Karin wakes up.
The anniversary of that trauma is bringing it all back, and Karin’s going to do something about it. She’s going to go to a therapist and try to come to terms with things. However, her situation is made more desperate when the psychotherapist she visits won’t see her. He immediately tells her there’s a conflict of interest, and this makes Karin suspicious that someone he’s treating has confessed to him about what happened to Julia.
Full investigation mode kicks in and, well, you know Karin. She’s a Teutonic Jessica Fletcher and soon she’s breaking into the therapist’s study and looking at his diary. Even more suspicious – within a day or so, the therapist goes missing. Karin knows she’s onto something and starts surveilling the local gangsters, who are themselves surveilling her…
Meanwhile, her nephew Reiner Witt (Till Firit) is still head of the local police, working alongside his partner Katharina Stozek (Milena Dreissig), the public prosecutor. When a man is found frozen to death on a bench on the promenade, Reiner leads the investigation. Well, he leaves most of the work up to the uniform cops Holm Brendel (Rainer Sellien) and Dorit Martens (Jana Julia Roth), who return with their banter and help keep proceedings from getting too dark.
If you followed Nordic Murders to season three or four and gave up because it started to get a bit silly, it’s worth returning for season six. The tone feels right and there’s a much better balance between the domestic storylines and the mystery elements. Karin’s barn conversion next to Reiner Witt’s house is complete so she lives there and continues to have close contact with her nephew’s family. It’s nice to see faces like Holm and Dorit, but also Karin’s young relative Merle Witt (Elsa Krieger) and Lucky the dog. Ellen Norgaard (Rikke Lyloff) is back as well, which evens out the continuity a little. The detective had disappeared away to Denmark in season five, but plays a role from episode two onwards, here.
The programme continues to capitalise on the setting. We now see it in the winter but it looks much less grey and dreary than in previous seasons. The pier, calm waters and big skies sit alongside the small, tourist town feel. This was once part of East Germany, and now and again you’ll notice the old communist-style apartment blocks. There’s plenty of cross-border activity from the start, with numerous Polish characters and ongoing cooperation between the German and Polish police. Karin’s therapist is on the Polish side of the border, for example.
In episode two, Karin tries to save a woman who gets into trouble on her morning swim and it becomes a murder case when a heavy dose of benzodiazepine is found in the swimmer’s flask. Then Karin investigates a stalker who is potentially involved in a murder, while Reiner looks into a new desalination plant connected to the case. In episode four, Karin tries to mediate when a family is riven over whether to sell their fishing trawler, but when one of them is killed Rainer Witt and Ellen Norgaard have a case on their hands. The season rounds out with an episode entitled Storm, in which Karin takes in a woman and her son who have been injured in a massive storm and finds signs of domestic abuse, while Rainer investigates the shooting of an antiques dealer.
Each episode in the new season is 90 minutes long. In Germany, these five episodes aired as seasons six and seven, between November 2024 and November 2025. There, the show carries the title Der Usedom-Krimi. In the US, you can stream seasons one to five on Amazon Prime Video.
For more German crime fiction, try a novel by Simone Buchholz.
