The Killing II - review

The Killing II finally came to an end this week-end. I'm not going to talk about the story-line in detail, because I imagine that some readers of this blog will be wanting to catch up with the later episodes in the near future. But a few thoughts do strike me.

This was a show of ten episodes of an hour each, which I felt began very well, and also ended strongly. At first I thought there was a tocuh of early Taggart in the enigmatic and inter-related story-lines, but this comparison only survived the first couple of episodes. Althought the plot was tangled, and had one or two good aspects, it wasn't as clever as the work of Glenn Chandler, who created Taggart.

The acting was good and the production values were pretty high. However, I felt the story sagged very badly in the middle. There were stretches when I was rather bored, and this was because the characters' relationships, although not without interest, weren't compelling enough to sustain such a protracted exercise. The political aspects of the story really didn't excite me at all.

I am still intending to watch the original series of The Killing, which attracted so many rave reviews. But overall, I'd have to rate The Killing II as a disappointment. It had a number of strengths, but to justify ten hours of story-telling, you need to have a really outstanding tale to tell. For me, at least, The Killing II too often felt like an endurance test. The story simply wasn't strong enough to justify such an investment of time.