Outside, spring is busting out all over. The birds are singing and the grass growing, so now is the perfect time to lock yourself inside and take in a chilly Nordic murder mystery about a serial killer who leaves creepy calling cards at the sight of their crimes. The first season of The Chestnut Man, which dropped on Netflix back in 2021, deserves to be watched no matter the weather, both because it’s just that good, and because there’s a new season about to drop.
The Chestnut Man is a well-made serial killer thriller
You’ve never look at a chestnut tree the same way again
The Chestnut Man is about a pair of detectives, Naia Thulin (Danica Curcic) and Mark Hess (Mikkel Boe Følsgaard) who are paired up somewhat against their wills and assigned to investigate the murder of a dentist. At the murder site, they find a chestnut man, which is a little figurine made out of chestnuts and matchsticks, a craft often made by Danish children. The show is set in and around Copenhagen.
Initially, Thulin and Hess start investigating the dentist’s fiancé, but soon find something interesting about the chestnut man itself. It’s marked with the fingerprint of Kristine Hartung, a young girl (and the daughter of a prominent government official) who disappeared a year ago. Rosa Hartung, the official (Iben Dorner), gets involved, and suddenly the case is bigger than either Thulin or Hess suspected.
That’s the basic setup for the story. Obviously I won’t spoil the details of what happens next, since the pleasure in watching this kind of slow-burning detective series is to experience the twists and turns for yourself. It suffices to say that the show unfolds in a gripping way that will keep you on the edge of your seat right up until the end when the killer is finally unmasked and reckoned with.
The Chestnut Man is peak Nordic noir
Even when it’s warm outside, the vibes are chilly
In some ways, The Chestnut Man is the sort of show you’ve seen before. How many crime dramas involve a shadowy killer who leaves spooky little tokens to taunt the police? Of course there’s a scene where a choir of adorable Danish children sing a song about chestnuts that takes on a new meaning in light of the gruesome case we’re investigating. Of course Thulin and Hess close in on some suspects who end up being red herrings. Of couse the killer is really…well, I shouldn’t say too much.
The point is that The Chestnut Man fits into a kind of formula, but that’s the glass-half-empty way of looking at it. A more accurate way would be that The Chestnut Man is part of a storytelling tradition that goes back many years: Nordic noir.
Nordic noir is a genre of crime fiction that focuses on grisly plots and bleak aesthetics. Stylistically, it’s often no-frills or even plain, which helps us pick up on the undercurrents of danger, misogyny, and violence that lurk beneath the seemingly placid exterior.
The Chestnut Man is based on a book of the same name by Søren Sveistrup, a master of Nordic noir; he’s also the screenwriter behind the Danish series that was remake as the popular AMC show The Killing. Other popular examples include The Girl With the Dragon Tatttoo, the 1997 movie Insomnia (remade by Christopher Nolan in 2002), and the popular Netflix show Detective Hole, which recently became one of the biggest shows on the streamer.
These kinds of shows and movies keep blowing up because they keep working. There’s something about the pregnant pauses, the stark landscapes, and the pull of melancholy that strike fear into the heart. By robbing the violence of any bombast or ceremony, it feels more unsettling and present, especially when it’s committed against vulnerable groups like children. The Chestnut Man might not break a ton of new ground, but it’s a peak example of a familiar genre done right.
The Chestnut Man returns
Get ready to hide and seek
The Chestnut Man is bubbling back up because it’s about to get a sequel. After five years, the show is returning for a second season on May 7. As you can see from the trailer above, it has the same eerie vibes as the first. It has children chanting nursery rhymes. There’s a shot of a tiny baby bird, feathers not yet grown on its blotchy skin, pushing an egg out of the nest. A new killer is out in the world, and Thulin and Hess reunite to stop them.
The second season of The Chestnut Man is subtitled Hide and Seek, the title of Søren Sveistrup’s follow-up book. That’s why the show didn’t get a sequel before now: they had to wait for Sveistrup to finish revealing what happened next. The first season of The Chestnut Man still works on its own, but the prospect of more where that came from is enough to give anyone the summer shivers.
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Credit where it’s due
Also, lest we come down too hard on the show’s formulaic aspects, there are some ways that The Chestnut Man bucks convention. For instance, while you could read some simmering romantic tension between Thorin and Hess, it never flowers into anything, and for the most part their relationship is built on professionalism, mutual respect, and shared investment in the job of catching the killer. It’s easy to imagine a lesser show forcing in a romance subplot.
In the end, a well-told story is its own reward, and The Chestnut Man is a well-told story. After the second season drops, maybe it’ll even dethrone what is, at least for the moment, the best detective show on Netflix.
- Release Date
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September 29, 2021
- Network
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Netflix
- Directors
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Kasper Barfoed, Mikkel Serup
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Mikkel Boe Følsgaard
Mark Hess
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Danica Ćurčić
Naia Thulin
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Villje Katring-Rasmussen
Olivia Kvium
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