WHITE SANDS – Review

WHITE SANDS is the name of a small Danish coastal town, thriving on fishing and tourism, that provides the setting for this eight-episode crime drama, featuring an attractive, mismatched pair of cops going undercover to solve the year-old murder of a German tourist. Marie Bach Hansen plays Helene, the Danish half of the team; her surly imported partner, Thomas, is played by Carsten Bjornlund.

Assigned to play a young married couple to endear themselves with the tight-lipped locals is especially difficult for both. Helene just finished a long deep undercover assignment in which she grew too emotionally attached to the thug she had to seduce. In the first scene, he’d bought her act so completely that he was starting to propose at a romantic dinner when she summoned the troops to bust him at the restaurant. Rejection to the max, leaving him lusting for payback, and her emotionally bruised from the empathy and vulnerability her role required of her. Thomas is recently widowed, and further burdened with an arrogant disdain for the Danes, making him less comfortable with having to pose as one. Pretending to be happily married to a stranger is hardly an easy mantle for either to don, particularly given the timing of this assignment with their recent histories.  

The village is brimming with suspects and possible motives that had eluded all previous police efforts. It might have been the result of love gone wrong; it may have been tied to some small-scale smuggling; it may have involved  a group of divers looking for treasure among the many wrecked ships in their unfriendly waters; or something completely different. Credited writers A.J. Kazinski and Anders Ronnow Klarlund throw in enough potential perps and reasons to keep viewers guessing throughout. The cast includes a generous array of characters of all ages who get enough screen time for us to feel what life is like in this closed community, including why there’s so much distrust of outsiders.

Although the series dangles some of the usual romantic will-they-won’t-they layer in the suspense mix, it’s mostly relegated to the corners after a mild meet-cute, with little of the lightness deployed in other series with comparably appealing unwed leads – the opposite of shows like CASTLE or MOONLIGHTING. The story plays out as a procedural, with many moments of tension, but relatively little violence or sensuality. It’s all quite low-key.

And that tone may limit its appeal for those seeking more playful flirtation or physical action. The two stars are realistically attractive, without being glamorized. Their emotional baggage unpacks slowly. Although the logic of their quest for the culprit stays solid through a slew of misdirections and dead ends, the material could have been more effectively condensed to six episodes, rather than eight  – a tendency that’s all too common among such series from Europe and elsewhere. Both detectives take a number of unreasonable risks of blowing their cover or being caught in the wrong place for such experienced officers. Some of those sketchy decisions create much of the dramatic tension, but also make these protagonists seem less skilled and more lucky than we might prefer in our heroes.   

The season covers a single mystery, ending in a way that makes it work as a stand-alone miniseries. But if it proves popular enough for the pair to reunite – as was the case for another Scandinavian crime drama, THE BRIDGE – it would be worth checking out. Especially if they tighten the package.

2 out of 4 stars

WHITE SANDS {HVIDE SANDE} mostly in Danish with subtitles, streaming exclusively on Topic.