Review by C.J. Bunce
Detective Forst (or just Forst as titled in the actual series) is one of those series that doesn’t make sense for Netflix. It comes from not knowing what it wants to be–“crime, drama, mystery” as advertised or the disturbing, twisted, horror show, the series ends up as. That comes from the source material, novels by Remigiusz Mróz–billed as “the most famous name in Polish crime fiction”–which tout “gruesome murders,” “bestial crimes,” and “gruesomely massacred body of a woman” among its plot descriptions. Its six 45-minute episodes are based on a screenplay by several writers, and it’s directed by Daniel Jaroszek. Their choices in adapting whatever story the novels told is the problem. Lurid, gory murders that force on the viewer overlong images of people being tortured, random sex scenes, and weird fetish hideouts are not the stuff most people expect when selecting their next Netflix series.
The rare series we’re discussing here at borg that is not on our recommended list, Detective Forst still may be worth noting for some of the players and people behind the scenes, who may be worth watching for in future projects.
Sure, many will pass over the series since it is in Polish with subtitles. But legitimate reasons not to watch outweigh reasons to watch it. The crimes are over-the-top, the story relies too much on coincidence, and the mystery just isn’t there, with answers to questions plopped into viewers’ laps seemingly from nowhere. Mróz’s hero is of course Detective Wiktor Forst, who is less frequently a detective in the series than banished ex-detective. He is played by actor Borys Szyc, made up as rough and ugly as a cop living and working high up in the frozen tundra of the Tatra mountains might actually be. Billed as experienced and effective, he is everything but. Nearly everything he touches is destroyed and nearly everyone he cares about is murdered. His choices are bad for even a novice cop. That’s not always his fault, as he has a legendary local figure called the Beast who has set him up as the fall guy for all his brutal murders–all operatic, disturbing, and put on like the worst showing of Batman’s Joker. Or maybe it’s someone else. Or maybe Forst is the Beast.
Author Mróz or director Jaroszek or the writers room–or all the above–make all the freshman mystery errors with their “hero.” There’s even a “big bad” with an eye patch in a mountaintop lair right out of James Bond. Like a 1930s noir thriller or 1970s sleaze show, or a snuff film, every woman Frost meets jumps in bed with him in their next scene, even as one remarks how bad he stinks. It’s all pretty gross. Viewers can’t help but empathize for every woman in the series, who is debased and worse–Mróz and Jaroszek are guilty of violating the “women in refrigerators” trope–the well-established prohibition of using women merely as plot device to be attacked or brutalized, or to create anguish for the hero. All the key women characters suffer this fate–something that would seem to have caused an objection somewhere between the series getting greenlit and being selected for Netflix viewers.
So what possibly could be said positive about Detective Forst? Inasmuch as Shetland is a vivid, gorgeous travelogue for an unusually stark locale for a mystery series, cinematographer Piotr Uznanski uses his connective scenes in Detective Forst to showcase an unusual but striking anti-travelogue for the mountainous villages within the Western Carpathians in Europe between Slovakia and Poland. He also has a great eye for exterior scenes of the village, and the use of filters that make Poland at (rare) times look like something out of a fantasy. But when the action returns, the ugliness has an air of Blade Runner’s cold and lifeless future, something between Eyes Wide Shut and Wes Craven.
Is everyone so unhappy because they are stuck living in the mountains? Do they just need more Vitamin D? Why are we supposed to care about these characters? You can imagine some of the actresses would fare better with a better script in a more mainstream series or film. Zuzanna Saporznikow is the co-star, playing Olga, a young journalist on the trail of the serial killer. As co-sleuth she brings much to the series at first, then she’s relegated to make choices no woman would make. Magda Debicka plays another promising character turned lost cause. One could see the top police boss played by Kamilla Baar nail the role of police chief on a much better series like Van Der Valk. As for the male actors, Andrzej Bienias brings a certain William H. Macy vibe to the show, playing the local inspector who appears a decade older than his real age. Hopefully he too has better projects in his future. Szyc’s Forst is unfortunately too much of a one-note character to tell whether Szyc has any talent as an actor, although he’s acted in Oscar-nominated work previously.
The ending is a disaster straight out of slasher movies–all the characters needed killed off after these six episodes, if simply to eliminate the possibility of a second season. Point the production team to the next slasher horror series, and keep them from the mystery crime genre. HBO/Max shows like True Detective and Fargo have been guilty of similar gratuitous, excessive violence, but this may stretch the brutality even further. Detective Forst is definitely one to pass on. It’s streaming now in Polish with English subtitles on Netflix.
