Streaming series review - White Sands

White Sands (Hvide Sande) **1/2 (out of 5) (NR) The title refers to a small Danish coastal town, thriving on fishing and tourism, that provides the setting for this eight-episode crime drama, featuring an attractive, mismatched pair of cops going undercover to solve the year-old murder of a German tourist. Marie Bach Hansen plays Helene, the Danish half of the team; her unwilling imported partner, Thomas, is played by Carsten Bjornlund.

Assigned to play a young married couple to endear themselves with the tight-lipped locals is especially difficult for both. Helene just finished a long deep undercover assignment in which she grew too emotionally attached to the thug she had to seduce. In the first scene, he’d bought her act so completely that he was starting to propose at a romantic dinner when she summoned the troops to bust him at the restaurant. Rejection to the max, leaving him lusting for payback, and her emotionally bruised from the empathy and vulnerability her role required. Thomas is recently widowed, and further burdened with an arrogant disdain for the Danes, making him less comfortable with having to pose as one. Pretending to be happily married to a stranger is hardly an easy mantle for either to don.

The village is rife with suspects and possible motives that had eluded all previous police efforts. It might have been love gone wrong; it may have been tied to some small-scale smuggling; it may have involved a group of divers looking for treasure among the many wrecked ships in their unfriendly waters; or something completely different. Credited writers A.J. Kazinski and Anders Ronnow Klarlund throw in enough potential perps and reasons to keep viewers guessing throughout. The cast includes a generous array of characters of all ages who get enough screen time for us to feel what life is like in this closed community.

Although there’s some of the usual romantic will-they-won’t-they layer to the suspense, it’s mostly relegated to the corners after a mild meet-cute, with little of the lightness deployed in other series with comparable leads – the opposite of shows like Castle or Moonlighting. The story plays out as a procedural, with many moments of tension, but relatively little violence or sensuality. It’s all quite low-key.

And that may limit its appeal for those seeking more flirtation or physical action. The two stars are realistically attractive, without being glamorized. Their emotional baggage unpacks slowly. Although the logic of their quest for the culprit stays solid through a slew of misdirections and dead ends, it could have been more effectively covered in six episodes, rather than eight. Both detectives take a number of unreasonable risks of blowing their cover or being caught in the wrong place for such experienced officers. Some of those sketchy decisions create much of the dramatic tension, but also make these protagonists seem less worthy of our respect.

The season covers a single mystery, ending in a way that makes it work as a stand-alone miniseries. But if it proves popular enough for the pair to reunite – as was the case for another Scandinavian crime drama, The Bridge – it would be worth checking out. Especially if they tighten the package.

(White Sands (Hvide Sande), mostly in Danish with subtitles, streams exclusively on Topic as of 9/15/22)