The Breakthrough - Netflix Series

The Breakthrough - Official Clip (as Trailer) | Netflix
MVSRS

True story. Kind of slow going, but not as slow as the investigation, which took 16 years. They managed to compress it into four episodes that might add up to three hours. The show spends time on the victim's families and the police. The lead investigator becomes so obsessed with the case he loses his wife.

Excerpts from Time: The True Story Behind Netflix’s Gripping Swedish Crime Drama The Breakthrough

On the morning of Oct. 19, 2004, the small city of Linköping was shaken by an unthinkable act of violence. Eight-year-old Mohammed Ammouri was walking to school when he was brutally attacked and stabbed by a masked assailant. Anna-Lena Svensson, a 56-year-old woman who happened to witness the attack, tried to intervene but was also fatally stabbed.  . . .

 

In 2020, forensic genealogy, a relatively new investigative technique, became the key to solving the case. This method, which had already gained prominence in the United States, uses DNA samples to trace a suspect’s family tree through publicly available genealogical databases.

The turning point in the Linköping case came when genealogist Peter Sjölund joined the investigation. By analyzing the DNA evidence, Sjölund traced the killer’s ancestry back over 200 years, constructing an intricate family tree that eventually led to the suspect: Daniel Nyqvist.

Nyqvist, 37 years old at the time, making him in his early 20s when the crime occurred, was arrested in June 2020. His DNA matched the evidence from the crime scene, and he quickly confessed to the murders. In court, Nyqvist claimed he had acted under the influence of voices in his head, describing the attacks as unprovoked. He was found guilty and sentenced to indefinite psychiatric care.

 

A Nearly Normal Family

A Nearly Normal Family | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix

Swedish murder mystery but it's more of a family drama. Daughter Stella gets arrested for killing her boyfriend, a rich guy ten years older than her. No gun play, no car chases, at least not yet, but for some reason it completely sucked us in.

Part of it, I think, is that we like puzzles, and this show is very puzzling. There are little clues all over the place, but you never know if they are real clues or just red herrings designed to lead us down the garden path.

Now it could be that we just have a couple of teenagers being stupid, but there is an undercurrent of something not-quite-right with some of the players. We're halfway through the six episodes so we should have our answers shortly.

Snabba Cash | Official Trailer | Netflix

This show is a little bit different. We have a young immigrant woman trying to break into the big leagues with a fancy software program, but she lives in the projects which is rife with gangsters, drug dealers and shootings, and she has relatives operating in the drug business. So far it's pretty good. There are like four main characters and dozen or so people from each of the worlds she operates in: the money world of high stakes venture capital, the restaurant where she works and the gangsters. We shall see if any of them make it through season one alive.

Near as I can tell, the gangsters in this show are involved in mid level distribution, they sell to guys who sell on the street. They in turn get their drugs from a higher level distributor who gets them from an importer. The are a wild bunch as you might expect, and obsessed with real security, as in who can you trust.

P. S. Midway through season one our Leya does something inexplicable which leads to a cascading series of disasters. The disasters are almost predictable, but the reason for her action is still missing. Did she just temporarily lose her mind? Given her situation that seems the most logical conclusion. Or maybe the writers just needed a trigger to set off this cascading series of disasters. It's a puzzlement.

Sailboat Rescue

Sailing vessel Götheborg of Sweden approaches disabled sailboat off the coast of Brittany

Not something you see everyday. A sailboat lost its rudder 50 miles off the coast of Brittany (France) and called for help. The nearest ship was the Götheborg of Sweden, a replica of a 18th Century Swedish East Indiaman. The replica vessel was launched in 2003.

Götheborg of Sweden

That's a big ship.

Via A Song of Joy

In Flight Photos

Saab Viggen 37 Pilot taking a photo
270 piece jigsaw puzzle

Wonder if this is who he was photoing. 

Here's the same airplane emerging from its bunker.

Number 21 has since become a museum piece. 

Kalmar Nyckel

Kalmar Nyckel
90 piece jigsaw puzzle

Kalmar Nyckel was a Swedish ship built by the Dutch to carry Swedish settlers to North America. It was built around 1625. It made four successful round trips from Sweden to North America. The replica of the ship (above) was launched at Wilmington, Delaware, in 1997. - excerpted from Wikipedia

Three Swedish Jets

Saab 37 Viggen, Saab 35 Draken, Saab JAS 39 Gripen

The Saab 37 Viggen was built from 1970 to 1990. It was the first canard design produced in quantity. The Viggen was also the most advanced fighter jet in Europe until the introduction of the Panavia Tornado into operational service in 1981.

Viggen has two major meanings in Swedish. The first meaning translates as "thunderbolt". Traditionally the word refers to prehistoric stone axes found in the ground during the viking age. The scandinavian people of this period thought that these axes had been sent down to earth by the lightning strikes of the god Thor when he hunted giants with his war hammer Mjölnir. The second meaning refers to "vigg", the Swedish word for the tufted duck. This is in reference to its canard configuration as "canard" is French for duck.

The Saab 35 Draken (Dragon) was manufactured between 1955 and 1974. It was the first fully supersonic aircraft to be deployed in Western Europe and the first aircraft to do the Cobra maneuver.

Production of the Saab JAS 39 Gripen (Griffin) started in 1987 and is ongoing. The aircraft has a top speed of Mach 2.0.

Text paraphrased from Wikipedia articles.

Via daily timewaster

Young Wallander

Young Wallander | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix
A handsome young Swede playing an earlier version of the crusty old Wallander. Sure, why not? Our hero is living in one of these urban renewal projects populated with immigrants and overrun with gangs and drugs. No real explanation of why he's living there, but it puts him on the scene when a horrific murder happens on his doorstep, which leads to taking a look at a wealthy family and eventually leads to the culprit, but we have no evidence so you will have to wait for season two for justice to prevail.

The dialog is all in English, not dubbed, though it does sound a little strange, but maybe that's just the way these characters sound.

Pic of the Day

Spillway gates for the Akkat power station dam in Sweden

Playing Geoguesser this morning and this bizarre artwork showed up. From some road signs I deduced it was in Sweden, but I still ended up 300 kilometers from the dam. A little Googling got me to a Wikipedia page that names the artists responsible.

When I first saw this I thought it might have been native American Indians from the Northwest USA, then I thought maybe from the Southwest, but these paintings look like they were deliberately crudely painted, something you don't see in any public display of American Indian art.

I don't quite understand this tendency towards ugly. I ran into some exceptionally ugly paintings in a brew pub in downtown Portland last week. If that is the best you can do, well, okay, I guess, but why would anyone put it on public display? I suspect limousine Bolsheviks, people who are well ensconced by a thick wad of money, but have no appreciation for any real beauty or talent. It reminds me of Inland Empire, a horrible, pointless idiotic film by David Lynch. I've seen several other of his films and I thought they were pretty great.

Maybe this is the low end of class warfare. Some people are exceptionally talented, and they are celebrated and praised. Then we have our average folks who go about their jobs, raise their families and drink their beer. Then we have people who got short changed in the valuable skill department, but are still doing their bit without much in the way of recognition, so they do things like this.

Wallander

Emily Barker - Nostalgia (Wallander version)
Just finished watching the last episode of Wallander on Netflix. We watched the whole series over the last month. The first three seasons were pretty much standard murder mysteries, but the last season took a left turn off into the boonies. The last episode (S4:E3) with the CIA and the cold war was just nuts. There were a couple of lines in there that just sent me over the edge.

Synopsis: Hakan, an aged, retired, Swedish submarine commander, has disappeared and his wife has died, an apparent suicide.

1:11:00 Kurt Wallander and Steven Wilson, an American, probably CIA. Kurt walks in the front door of Hakan's house carrying something wrapped in a tarp.
CIA: Hello, Kurt.CIA sits down, Kurt pours and brings him a drink.
Kurt: There you are.
CIA: Ah, that's mighty kind of you.
CIA: To your health.
Kurt: So what are you doing here?
CIA: (SIGHS) I guess I didn't make my flight. . . . I've been trying to think of some piece of information that might help figure out what's happened.
Kurt: And did you think of something?
CIA: A friend of mine and I, we were colleagues . . . And I had this deal with him that he would help me. And if ever he became troubled by any consequences, then he would let me know and I would help him, in return. And the way that he would let know would be that he would disappear.
Kurt: And how would you help him?
CIA: I'd find him, take him elsewhere.
Kurt: (opens tarp) It's an American device. Those submarines weren't Russian, they were American, and Hakan was working for you.
CIA: (nods) At that time, it was considered a priority to destabilise the government here. It was perceived as being Communist. It worked. After the fake Russian subs, support for the East dwindled away to almost nothing. Which was another border made safe, another front closed down.
Kurt: And Louise? Louise? So, was it always part of the rescue plan that she would die? That he would arrange a suicide, leave evidence to blame her?CIA: I liked Louise.
Kurt: Where is he?
CIA: Waiting for me. But I won't go fetch him. It would be inadvisable for us to become involved. Far better for someone else. Someone with an interest to make him face up to his responsibilities. To what he's done.
Kurt: What about your responsibilities? You wouldn't be here if you weren't afraid to face them. If I confront Hakan with what he's done, I'll make sure I do the same for you.
CIA: You're not in the best of health. You have a family. Are you sure you want to make that threat?
Kurt: Where is he?

There was an incident involving a Soviet sub in Swedish waters back in 1981, but it was definitely Soviet. There have been a number of other incidents that were blamed on the Soviets, and given the one big red flag, they probably were triggered by Soviet subs, not American ones. Some people disagree. But you know, conspiracy theories don't need any facts, and blaming the CIA is a popular sport, so let's blame them. Google has more.

Update March 2020 reformatted dialog to look more like a script. Don't know how it got jumbled.