Detective #24: The compelling antiheroine
©SVT
Acorn TV recently started streaming the Swedish television series Detective #24 (Detektiven från Beledweyne), a drama from SVT (Sveriges TV), the Swedish national television company.
Swedish writer Aron Levander (The Truth Will Out, Jordskott) created the series. Levander’s a master with the psychological underpinnings of human nature, especially when it comes to detectives. His characters are fallible, yet driven to find the truth. Levander grew up in Uppsala, where the show is set, then went to university in France and finally settled in London. Those geographical places seem to be unconsciously influencing his work. There is the austere mood of Swedish crime shows, coupled with the French penchant for understanding the character’s nuances and motivations. Finally, there is an undercurrent of British humor as Tilda (Malin Levanon) does not hesitate to act in her own best interest, even if she blunders through her interactions, as we see in an early scene when she inserts herself into a live police TV interview and dominates the rest of the news story. After, we watch her, watching herself, alone in her flat, pleased with the first positive thing that she has forced to happen in obviously quite a while.
It isn’t just Levander’s sensibility that informs this series. Finnish director Zaida Bergroth (Tove), who specializes in complex and extreme characters, adds another layer of psychological angst to both Tilda’s and Ibrahinn’s (Nasir Dhagole) characters as their personal and professional needs move the narrative forward. Tilda and Ibrahinn feed off each other in a fascinating, opportunistic way. Tilda has no shame passing off Ibrahinn’s ideas as her own, while Ibrahinn is willing to help an opportunistic, lazy prosecutor if that is what it takes to grant him asylum in Sweden.
Watching the dynamics of Tilda’s family is painful yet humorous. The sibling rivalry between herself and her sister Beata (Hanna Ullerstam) seems different for each sister. While Tilda wants her father Teddy (Donald Högberg) to be proud of her, it is clear that her sister wants to slight her in their father’s eyes and make him see what a true loser she believes her sister is.
When the show opens, we quickly learn that Tilda has been fired as the police prosecutor for some grievous error. She is now working for the legal defense of migrants at a detention center near Uppsala. While she tells her sister that she finds the job rewarding because she is helping people, we soon see she doesn’t care about the migrants’ plight. She goes through the motions of deportation. She can’t remember their names. In short, nobody in their right mind would want Tilda to represent them…Or would they?
Even though Ibrahinn is about to be deported, by the end of the first story, which plays out over two episodes, Ibrahinn is still in the country and Tilda is in a much better position professionally. The real question becomes: will Tilda actually help Ibrahinn get asylum or will she just keep using him for her career advancement? Ibrahinn is a pawn, or is he? His position is tenuous throughout the series and part of the overall narrative is about him somehow regaining his agency and power. Ibrahinn is linked to Tilda but will he ever be free of her?
In an interview with Aron Levander, he describes Tilda as a character that is just “messy” and that she is a decent person. Tilda, I would argue, is far more complicated than being “messy.” The real issue is that she is a woman. There are plenty of stories of ruthless men, stepping over people and ruining careers to advance themselves. What is surprising is how ingrained it is in Western culture to see a woman do the same thing and judge her so harshly.
If one replaced Tilda with a character named Thomas, it would be a story that has been told a thousand times. The oldest son, the favorite of a mercurial father, wants to keep his place at the top of the family hierarchy, even with his fall from grace. With a woman in that position, everything changes. Her cloying and clawing is no longer acceptable by societal norms: she is somehow corrupt and sloppy. If you do not agree with this, then think of the detective Mats (Kristof Kamiyasu) who hates her, the reporter out to humiliate and destroy her, and her father at once praising her but punishing her.
At the heart of Tilda’s problems are her familial relationships. They are what motivates her to take unprecedented steps to solve the mystery at hand: a young woman has disappeared…is she dead or being held captive? If we are going to be honest, Tilda cares more about solving the case for her own glory rather than the girl’s sake but does she need to be altruistic? Whatever her motivations, she is determined to solve the mystery and bring the girl’s abductor and possibly murderer to justice. The same cannot be said for Tilda’s bosses, both males, who do not care if she is making headway. They are more concerned with what the public perceives, ironically news stories written by a woman, which seems to be more like malicious and petty gossip even if the headlines do hold truth in them.
The other male who does not care about Tilda’s effectiveness is the detective, Mats. He is more concerned at times trying to get Tilda kicked off the case than letting her help solve the mystery. Mats’ vendetta against Tilda worsens as the next four episodes unfold. The more Mats’ criticizes Tilda, the less his female co-workers support him as his prejudices reveal that he is becoming hysterical, more like an unhinged woman.
Finally, Tilda’s father, Teddy, a retired lawyer and judge rules his household and daughters with what he believes is absolute authority; however, the audience can see that his hold on these women is far less tenable than he would believe. Tilda would not be under his thumb to such an extreme extent except that she feels guilty about her mother. All we find out is that her mother left. We don’t know why. Even stranger is the portrait of Tilda’s mother, a dead ringer for Tilda, that hangs conspicuously in the dining room, watching over all the family’s meals, conversations, and dysfunction. It seems that it is her absence that has caused the familial breakdown, and her ghostly presence that haunts each family member to become the worst version of themselves. The real question is, would Detective #24 be an even darker show if she hadn't left?