Beside Wallander with Henrik Kristersson the Swedish crime series Beck is one of my Nordic favorites, or at least it used to be. Peter Haber is basically brilliant and a perfect match, but also a balanced contrast to his rough and unconventional colleague Gunvald Larsson, equally well portrayed by Mikael Persbrandt. Sadly the latter decided to leave the series after season 6, and maybe the producers should have realised when enough is enough and to create something new. But they just had to squeeze the success melon again, and with another three seasons, but also bring in the ever so bearded Game of Thrones actor Kristofer Hivju. He may be perfect as a viking type in a medeival like fantasy series, but that does not make him a good actor. On the contrary. Hivju is probably the most overrated screen actor in Scandinavian film and TV. I got to watch only about seven minutes into Quid Pro Quo before he managed to prove me right, and distinctly so. Sadly his stiff performance seems to have a negative influence on other actors too, or is this simply due to poor dialogue and bad direction. The only one who still hasn't lost his touch is Peter Haber.
2 Reviews
Not the best Beck episode
borgerb-601577 April 2023
Warning: Spoilers
I agree that this episode wasn't particularly interesting to watch. The plot had too many cliches. How many times have we seen the secret services take advantage of the police and hinder the investigation. The same regarding immigrants dealing with illegal trade and innocent immigrants not wanting to speak with the police.
The solution to the mystery was also not realistic. I got the impression that the episode was written to develop the characters and the plot just added as a filler without real meaning.
I also didn't like the very end either. Very unprofessional behavior by ***. It's like the script writers wanted to write h** out of the series by letting h** do something really stupid..
It's sad when the highlight of the episode was the dialog between Beck and his neighbor (RIP. Ingvar Hirdwall) about Cuban cigars. I really miss Beck being the lead investigator and not just having a side role.
When it comes to Kristofer Hivju's poor performance I think that is partly because of him trying to speak Swedish to make the Swedish audience understand him better. He's supposed to be Norwegian in the series and then he should select more Norwegian words and not speak what we call "svorsk".
Too many Norwegian actors make the same mistake when they participate in Danish or Swedish movies or TV series.
Obviously the actors aren't fully comfortable with speaking partly Norwegian and Swedish. It's cringeworthy for Norwegians to listen to our actors pick words just for the Swedes to understand us better. Maybe they're told to do so, but real Norwegians would never fall so far down to pick Swedish words very close to the Norwegian word. E. g. Picking the Swedish work inte instead of the Norwegian word ikke (meaning not). It's especially bad since Swedish also uses the word icke for not.
If you know the Swede you're speaking to won't understand the Norwegian word you first say the Norwegian word and then say the Swedish one immediately after if you realize he didn't understand.
We don't see that kind of communication at all in Beck. Kristofer Hivju tries to be so Swedish the Swedish audience won't understand he's actually a Norwegian. Granted, if you have lived 10 years in Sweden you might naturally speak more Swedish, but the Steinar character was just hired in from Oslo to help. So he has no real reason to speak Swedish. Actually quite a few Norwegians who are a bit afraid the Swedes won't understand them would speak in English instead. It would have been more natural if Steinar did that.
Having said this I agree there are better male actors in Norway than Kristofer Hivju. However, he's better than what we have seen in Beck.
The solution to the mystery was also not realistic. I got the impression that the episode was written to develop the characters and the plot just added as a filler without real meaning.
I also didn't like the very end either. Very unprofessional behavior by ***. It's like the script writers wanted to write h** out of the series by letting h** do something really stupid..
It's sad when the highlight of the episode was the dialog between Beck and his neighbor (RIP. Ingvar Hirdwall) about Cuban cigars. I really miss Beck being the lead investigator and not just having a side role.
When it comes to Kristofer Hivju's poor performance I think that is partly because of him trying to speak Swedish to make the Swedish audience understand him better. He's supposed to be Norwegian in the series and then he should select more Norwegian words and not speak what we call "svorsk".
Too many Norwegian actors make the same mistake when they participate in Danish or Swedish movies or TV series.
Obviously the actors aren't fully comfortable with speaking partly Norwegian and Swedish. It's cringeworthy for Norwegians to listen to our actors pick words just for the Swedes to understand us better. Maybe they're told to do so, but real Norwegians would never fall so far down to pick Swedish words very close to the Norwegian word. E. g. Picking the Swedish work inte instead of the Norwegian word ikke (meaning not). It's especially bad since Swedish also uses the word icke for not.
If you know the Swede you're speaking to won't understand the Norwegian word you first say the Norwegian word and then say the Swedish one immediately after if you realize he didn't understand.
We don't see that kind of communication at all in Beck. Kristofer Hivju tries to be so Swedish the Swedish audience won't understand he's actually a Norwegian. Granted, if you have lived 10 years in Sweden you might naturally speak more Swedish, but the Steinar character was just hired in from Oslo to help. So he has no real reason to speak Swedish. Actually quite a few Norwegians who are a bit afraid the Swedes won't understand them would speak in English instead. It would have been more natural if Steinar did that.
Having said this I agree there are better male actors in Norway than Kristofer Hivju. However, he's better than what we have seen in Beck.
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