(TV Series) The Chestnut Man - Pretty Dark Mystery Thriller Series Based on Successful Danish Novel

This series was released more than a week ago but I just started to watch it in the last 3 days. The premise looked interesting enough about solving the case of mysterious killing. All right let's get more to it now.

Brief Story Line

Detective Naia Thulin (Danica Curcic - The Mist TV series etc) was planning to transfer to Cyber crime as she wanted to spend more time with her young daughter. But before she left, there was a new murder case in Copenhagen where the victim was a woman with one of her hand cut off and a small figurine made by chestnut left at the crime scene. Naia was asked to partner with Mark Hess (Mikkel Boe Følsgaard - A Perfectly Normal Family etc) to investigate the case where they were supported by the forensic guy Simon Genz (David Dencik - Chernobyl mini series etc).

When a new clue surfaced, it led the police to the case of the missing daughter of Minister Rosa Hartung (Iben Dorner) and her husband Steen (Esben Dalgaard Andersen). Things got more complicated when there was another killing with the same manner.

So what was the reason for the killings? And what was the connection with the other case? Find them all in this quite amazing mystery drama series.

End of Brief Story Line

Well it's been a while since I watched a series focusing on capturing a serial killer. And this one was pretty entertaining for me. The story telling was done quite well with characters who were engaging. The opening scene was very good as it set up nicely for what was to come. It did not take too long either to get to the interesting part of the mystery, probably it was due to only having 6 episodes to complete the whole story.

I have never seen a Danish series before and so I was totally unfamiliar with the main cast. But in general I have no complaints on them. They performed their roles nicely and quite convincing as well. Only challenge would be the foreign language spoken. But having experienced watching various series from different countries, it made me quite accustomed with listening to non English speaking language. It was also a pleasure to see the sceneries from the country where I have never been to and Denmark seemed like a beautiful country, especially during the autumn. And it made me intrigued to watch another Danish series on Netflix which also starred Mikkel Boe Følsgaard.

The mystery itself was challenging to solve. Even watching the series in full concentration did not help me figure out the real culprit. So I was happy that it still manage to give me a surprise when everything was finally revealed. I was also satisfied with the ending as it gave proper closure. Since I could not read Danish, the opening and closing credit just went pass me. However, I managed to find out on the internet that the series was based on the novel of the same title written by Søren Sveistrup. He was the creator of the highly rated Danish TV series The Killing which had been remade to US version with the same title and pretty successful too.

As a series that focused on catching a serial killer and finding out the reasons, it felt really dark. In fact, I thought there was nothing cheerful in here, except maybe when Naia's young daughter Le Thulin (Liva Forsberg) appeared. Overall this was still pretty enjoyable and quite entertaining. Those looking for dark mystery solving series from Denmark can certainly give it a try. Despite its efficient story telling, there might be instances where the pace slowed down a bit, but not up to the point of boring. Not a lot of action involved in here (like in similar kind of series) so it might not be appealing for people who prefer to see them. I myself was quite satisfied with the series, especially since it only has 6 episodes and a proper closure.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars