{"id":353229,"date":"2025-08-18T03:36:28","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T03:36:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/353229\/"},"modified":"2025-08-18T03:36:28","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T03:36:28","slug":"review-beck-s10-e2-2-the-killing-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/353229\/","title":{"rendered":"REVIEW: Beck (S10 E2\/2) | The Killing Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

While we\u2019re getting used to episodes of Beck<\/strong> in which Martin Beck hardly features at all, will we be able to cope with the death of a major character, and the traumas of Martin\u2019s grandson Vilhelm?<\/p>\n

After the last episode, which concluded with the shock death of long-standing favourite character Jenny Bod\u00e9n (Anna Asp), we\u2019re wondering how much more traumatic the series can get.<\/p>\n

Apart from Martin Beck himself, Jenny was the character with perhaps the most fully fleshed-out private life, so with her gone and titular character Martin Beck fading into the background, we\u2019re wondering what will propel the series in future. Could it be entirely based around the traumas of Martin Beck\u2019s grandson Vilhelm, who has seen more kidnappings, shootings and hostage-taking in a few months with the police than most officers probably see in their entire career?<\/p>\n

In The Invisible Man, which kicks off with Martin gloomily contemplating Jenny\u2019s memorial book, everyone is now in therapy. Only Ayda \u00c7etin (Elmira Arikan) seems unaffected, but we have long suspected that she\u2019s a robot.<\/p>\n

Vilhelm seems to be in denial, arguing that Jenny knew the risks when she put on the uniform. Surely he can\u2019t really believe this? His Die Hard attitude to policing is certainly going to result in more trauma.<\/p>\n

When podcaster Medin is been murdered in his bed, suspicion falls on Andrew Tate-style influencer Roos. His philosophy \u2013 roughly, do military training and eat more meat \u2013 doesn\u2019t cut much ice with Alex, or even with Vilhelm, and certainly not with gender studies researchers Josefine (Sofia Pekkari) and Annelie (Elinor Silfversparre). But Roos does preach against violence.<\/p>\n

Fingerprints found in Medin\u2019s flat tie into evidence found at a series of Peeping Tom incidents \u2013 Martin is investigating the so-called \u2018balcony man\u2019, so is called in to help on Medin\u2019s murder.<\/p>\n

Vilhelm repeatedly goes off the rails, running his own investigations, and even taking civilian worker Ayda along on a search which results in the discovery of another body. But the question remains whether the \u2018balcony man\u2019 investigation and the murders are connected. Is it the toxically masculine Roos, his creepy assistant Henrik, researcher Josefine or Annelie\u2019s even creepier boyfriend Pedram?<\/p>\n

Things come to a head when a violent argument between Roos and Josefine, who were having an affair, sparks another killing, and Vilhelm\u2019s hot psychologist Nina Gonzalez (Dilan Gwyn) is held hostage by Henrik. Vilhelm, bafflingly, runs up eight flights of stairs rather than taking the lift to save her, by which time she\u2019s psychoanalysed him into passivity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Themes of toxic masculinity, grief, family values and responsibility are threaded through this episode, which is far more like the Beck episodes of old than the more current, procedure-driven plots, so that\u2019s to be welcomed. Josef, worryingly, seems to be buying into Roos\u2019s alpha male propaganda, while Martin talks to Vilhelm about his psychological state \u2013 it\u2019s a sign of Vilhelm\u2019s traumatic condition that he has a lava lamp on his windowsill. Martin thinks that Vilhelm is too traumatised for police work, and has lost the compassion necessary for the job, but new boss Ebba St\u00e5hl (Nina Zanjani) insists that he remain on the team, despite Martin\u2019s obvious misgivings.<\/p>\n

All we miss from this episode really is one of Martin\u2019s surreal chats with his neighbour Grannen, which is replaced by a baffling conversation with a retired actress about John Travolta and Battlefield Earth (possibly a deliberate reference to Scientology?).<\/p>\n

Nonetheless this was the better of the two episodes of this series, and actually bodes well for the next, now being filmed. As the Swedes say, \u201cFinns det hj\u00e4rterum s\u00e5 finns det stj\u00e4rterum\u201d \u2013 roughly, there\u2019s always room for one more arse on the sofa.<\/p>\n

Chris Jenkins<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2b50\u2b50\u2b50\u2b50<\/p>\n

Rating: 4 out of 5.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: OUR EPISODE ONE REVIEW<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Beck is broadcast in the UK on BBC Four and BBC iPlayer<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While we\u2019re getting used to episodes of Beck in which Martin Beck hardly features at all, will we…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3937],"tags":[77,382,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-353229","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-tv","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115047680143322641","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}