TV Pick of the Week: Wisting - review by Yvette Huddleston

The latest mystery that Wisting has to solve unfolds after the nanny of a wealthy family is murdered at the well-appointed hotel that they own and run in the eastern coastal town of Larvik. On the same night the young boy that the nanny was looking after disappears, possibly kidnapped. The child’s parents – English businessman Andrew Greenwood (Rupert Evans) and his Norwegian wife Mai (Andrea Bræin Hovig) – are, understandably beside themselves with worry, as is their teenage daughter Charlotte (Teddie Allen). Young Clifford (Smylie Bradwell) was last seen by the family going off up to bed after a pleasant evening spent together.

Wisting immediately suspects that the child has been kidnapped and as he and his team investigate further, it becomes apparent that the family may have secrets of their own that are linked with Clifford’s disappearance. Grandfather Olav Engdahl (Svein Sturla Hungnes), who founded and owns the hotel, is not terribly helpful when questioned, while Andrew eventually admits that he knows the whereabouts of the murdered nanny’s missing mobile phone. That leads to a series of revelations that could well have a connection to the missing boy and young Charlotte seems uneasy about sharing what she was doing on the night of her brother’s disappearance. Then a ransom note arrives with a cryptic message that suggests the boy was taken as an act of revenge…

The narrative is carefully constructed with the thriller elements skilfully embedded in a wider storyline that takes in both the unflashy procedural diligence of the investigating team as well as the ongoing tensions and difficulties in Wisting’s personal life. A widower, he has a fraught relationship with his adult children – journalist daughter Line (Thea Green Lundberg) and nurse son Thomas (Fredrik Stenberg Ditlev-Simonsen) – who both feel some resentment for his work always having taken precedence over their family life. The pain and guilt that Wisting feels about this is movingly and sensitively portrayed by Nordin as Wisting is constantly torn between his professional duty and his paternal love. This is never more evident here when he reluctantly enlists the help of Line’s former boyfriend Tommy (Mads Sjøgård Pettersen) to assist in a risky operation connected to the case and he discovers a painful incident in his son Thomas’s past.