It is very pleasing that this series more than matched the promise of the first. The developing relationship between Karppi and Nurmi is very well and convincingly done and the fact that they both have personal family traumas that they are coming to terms with is made a very effective part of the whole story, mingling the personal and professional without ever seeming too manipulative and improbable. I also like the fact the Karppi is very far from being an exemplary police figure - she can be ill-tempered, argumentative, his suspects, be pig-headed…but always she is convincingly shown as a good detective. Nurmi is shown in a slightly less detailed way, although there were interesting personal developments for him in this series which, if there is to be another one (I do hope so) gives new avenues to explore. His personal family issues are going to be more important in the future I think.
The plot is a fine example of a richly interlinked story with criminals and political corruption being very effectively linked - again without seeming too self-conscious and clever-clever. I did think that the number of bodies piling up in the first couple of episodes or so was getting a little excessive but this turned out to be fine as it made the investigations and the hidden connections better. It also allows for an effectively paced investigation which well conveys the length of criminal investigations, of how they can seem to stall, of how a sudden revelation puts the investigators onto a brand new track…
But there was one other element in the penultimate series that, from a plot and character POV made me think, ‘What, really?’ viz the fact that a fully operational helicopter was sitting at an abandoned prison and Nurmi knew how to fly it! this was rather like the quick access to and high level of skills in, underwater diving that, interestingly, occurred at about the same stage in the story here as in the first series..
But in both cases the subsequent events and nail-gripping tension justified the rather clumsy plotting.