Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole TV Review: The best-selling novels finally get a worthy adaptation

Plot: Harry Hole, a troubled Oslo police detective, must contend with both a horrific serial killer and his corrupt colleague Tom Waaler.

Review: With so many popular book series out there, it can sometimes feel daunting to step into yet another adaptation. Streaming series based on best-selling novels have been popping up all over the place, with reinventions of classic characters (Young Sherlock) and debuts of iconic investigators (Scarpetta), turning out to be solid takes on beloved franchises. The Norwegian series Detective Hole, based on the novels by Jo Nesbø, is not the first adaptation of the books about the titular Oslo cop, but it is certainly the best to date. With Jo Nesbø scripting the fifth novel in his series and introducing a new origin for the character, Detective Hole is superior to the 2017 English-language film The Snowman and poised to be an ongoing hit for Netflix. Starring Tobias Santelmann in the lead with Joel Kinnaman as his nemesis and colleague, Tom Waaler, Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole is a dark and thrilling mystery.

In the books, Harry Hole (pronounced “Hoo-leh”) is a depressed yet brilliant detective who often breaks the law to solve his cases. Looked at as one of the best investigators in the world, Hole travels to various countries to help solve crimes while regularly returning to his home in Oslo. Played by Michael Fassbender in The Snowman, Hole is often equated with Sherlock Holmes and with the character who inspired Jo Nesbø when creating him, Harry Bosch. Michael Connelly’s Bosch has had a successful series on Prime Video, and now, Harry Hole gets his opportunity with this Netflix series. Set across nine episodes, Detective Hole chronicles the cat-and-mouse game between Harry (Tobias Santelmann) and dirty cop Tom Waaler (Joel Kinnaman). The series opens with a fateful car crash on the way to a crime scene that becomes a turning point in Hole’s alcoholism before shifting five years later to the detective still stuck on a brutal bank robbery that he feels responsible for. This investigation leads Hole and his partner, Ellen Gjelten (Ingrid Bolso Berdal), to discover Waaler’s involvement with a drug ring.

In this version of Oslo, gangs and criminal activity have swept across the city, where police officers don’t even carry guns, leading to an influx of police activity. Adding to the burgeoning divide between Hole and Waaler is a serial killer who enters at the end of the first episode, complicating an already nebulous mystery series. Detective Hole keeps the tension between the main characters taut as the hunt for the serial killer continues and adds in multiple memorable characters including a charismatic gang leader played by the great Peter Stormare, a reporter played by Kelly Gale, and Hole’s love interest Rakel (Pia Tjelta) and her son Oleg who serve as Harry Hole’s beacon of light in the dark recesses of his addictions and mental strife. Throughout the series, Hole demonstrates his aptitude as a detective, using tactics that are frequently called illegal or unconventional but that propel him towards solving the multiple past and present cases that converge.

Compared to other detective series, Detective Hole is brutally violent, with many deaths shown on screen, including a headshot in the premiere episode that I did not expect. Similar in tone and style to the Millennium series, notably The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Detective Hole explores themes of apathy and violence in the shifting landscape of Oslo. There are moments of bright clarity and beauty, mixed with scenes of the city’s grime and underbelly, as well as the impact of a brutally hot summer and the noir nights of heavy rainfall. The shifting weather patterns echo the balance between Harry and Tom, each of whom has a duplicity in their nature, with Harry leaning towards the good and Tom towards self-preservation. Santelmann, who starred in the underrated film Kon-Tiki, gives Hole an edge that Fassbender’s portrayal was lacking. Kinnaman, who has been in everything from Suicide Squad to Robocop as well as great turns in the AMC series The Killing and the Swedish Easy Money trilogy, makes for a great antagonist.

While the series had to be retitled from Harry Hole to avoid English-speaking audiences being put off by the protagonist’s humorous name, Detective Hole is a solid reboot of the novel’s timeline. Jo Nesbø wrote all nine episodes of the first season, basing it on his fifth Harry Hole novel, The Devil’s Star. Fans of the books will find the characters remain faithful to the written page, with the shift in the story’s timeline negligibly affecting them and their narrative paths. Øystein Karlsen helmed six episodes of the series, with Anna Zackrisson on the remaining three. Detective Hole also boasts a stellar score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, echoing their ethereal music for Wind River and The Road. The nine-episode series pushes the running time of each episode to just about a full hour, cramming each chapter with the requisite red herrings, misdirects, and cliffhangers you expect from a procedural mystery. Like the novel that inspired it, Detective Hole sometimes feels a little long and probably could have cut an episode or two to keep the pace a bit tighter, but there is a lot to keep you entertained through this intense series.

Nordic noir has been popular for some time, and it remains a mystery that it took this long for Detective Hole to finally get a worthy adaptation. Maybe the failure of Michael Fassbender’s take on the character required a little distance before reintroducing it to mainstream audiences, but I appreciate that it is coming from Norway, not Hollywood. This is a story we have seen too many times in translation that loses what makes the source material so strong. Jo Nesbø knows his character better than anyone, and not only does he do justice to his own novels, but also gives the character just enough of a reboot to make this series entertaining for fans of the books and newcomers alike. Between Tobias Santelmann and Joel Kinnaman, Detective Hole has more than enough to make this a must-watch for fans of mysteries and dark thrillers, with an ending that promises future seasons with just as much to tune in for.

Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole is now streaming on Netflix.