Post Mortem – Season 1 Episode 3 “On Behalf of the Family” Recap & Review

On Behalf of the Family

Episode 3 of Post Mortem begins with Odd waking up nice and early, down in the basement getting Arvid’s body ready for the upcoming funeral. Using Arvid’s body as a table, Odd manages to secure another listing – that being Mrs Gundersen of course. Odd is absolutely delighted (in a genuinely funny bit of dark comedy) as it means he’s got another job on the table.

Odd arrives at the nursing home, where Live is still trapped inside the room. She hides out under the bed while Odd tentatively moves the deceased’s body. Thankfully Live manages to avoid being seen, and heads home to try and clean up the blood on her.

Meanwhile, Reinert remains angsty, desperate to solve this case. Judith is convinced there’s nothing he’ll find on the CCTV footage but our plucky detective waves away Judith’s Well, Reinert waves away Judith’s negative – and her suggestion that Arvid died of a heart attack.

While Odd preps for the funeral, calling on Live to read a eulogy, Live herself continues to suffer from her condition. In fact, her enhanced hearing sees Live head outside and start beating down one of her neighbours to a pulp.

When Reinert arrives to try and stop her, Live literally throws the man halfway across the garden. He sports some pretty nasty bruises on the back of this too, which Reinert decides to pin up as evidence toward this case. Given he’s pinned this up with red yarn, Judith expresses her dismay when she sees him.

Reinert starts to piece everything together, with Live being the most obvious suspect. In fact, Live’s behaviour sees her acting like an addict; she’s sweaty, losing track of time and generally getting dates and times mixed up. And speaking of time, Arvid’s funeral arrives.

Live is completely out of it, and as she steps up to read her eulogy, she fumbles her words and eventually hurries out the back. Reinert attempts to get in touch, ringing her numerous times to no avail. When he heads over to her place, Reinert hugs Live tightly.

When we cut forward in time, Live awakens in bed with Reinert next to her, covered in blood and with his neck bitten. Uh oh.

The Episode Review

So it seems like Live has struck again… or has she? Now, it would seem like Live is now an uncontrollable vampire but it could also be that the creepy Dr Hanson could know what Live is going through and framing her for his deaths. That’s just a theory at this point though so don’t take that as gospel.

Out of all the episodes this season, this is the one that actually manages to strike the right balance between humour and drama. There’s some wickedly dark jokes in this and the absurdist humour works perfectly alongside this story.

With Reinert now dead and Live in a world of trouble, lots of question marks remains over the direction the second half of this season is likely to take. We’ll have to wait and see for now though but so far so good.