"Taelgia's" theme and issue is highly topical: what happens to a city (in this case Södertälje) when crime directly or indirectly affects everyone in its vicinity?
For six hours, we will follow:
• A family where the father's debts have consequences for the whole family
• A newly hired police officer whose family thinks that the police are betraying Södertälje's Syrians
• The more or less professional criminals who tie the two aforementioned stories together
"Taelgia" is a careful build – all characters are portrayed as real, multidimensional people and not flat villains or perfect heroes. The message – how easy it can be to go wrong and how difficult it can be to get out – is credibly conveyed by a competent cast without writing the viewer too much on the nose.
But the strength of the series is also its weakness. The eagerness to give all persons a complexity leads to all motives and motives being brought to light at once. When a police officer pushes a threatening teenager to the ground, the scene cannot proceed until we have the perspectives of the young people watching, the guy who was hit, the police being filmed and the working conditions of the blue light personnel.
Of course, that's not a bad thing in itself, but after a couple of similar scenes, "Taelgia" starts to feel rather sluggish. The story is tough on a kind of narrative cleverness and would have benefited from withholding certain perspectives to provide the elements of surprise that are required in a crime series anyway.
For those of us who are not so interested in police series, the snippet of the series feels more like a paler copy of "The Thin Blue Line", although Sara Shirpey gives a strong performance as Sibel. The best is the slow crumbling of an ordinary family where members are sucked into crime in different ways.
"Taelgia" will be shown in six episodes x 60 minutes on SVT Play from September 22.