Season 1 |
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Episode Guide
Episode 1 -| Review Score – 3/5
Episode 2 -| Review Score – 3/5
Episode 3 -| Review Score – 2/5
Episode 4 -| Review Score – 2/5
When it comes to crime thrillers, you know you are in good hands if it is from Nordic countries. From their foggy small towns at the foothills of snow-capped terrains to haunting string music that brings chills when the characters get too close, the productions of Nordic thrillers are impeccable.
Apart from the twisted and shocking crimes, complex narrative structures and adrenaline-filled climax, they also focus on the emotional quotient right from the bat as evident in The Breakthrough’s first 5 minutes. But does this mini-series do justice to its genre?
The Breakthrough (2025) aka Genombrottet is another exciting Swedish Netflix Original that graced our screens this year and is based on true events. With exciting themes of investigations, family drama, desperation and murder, it’s for those who love fictional retellings of true crime events. The 4-episode series stars Peter Eggers, Bahador Foladi, Jessica Liedberg, Mattias Nordkvist and Julia Sporre, and is directed by Lisa Siwe.
The Breakthrough Season 1 begins with the double murder of Adnan, an eight-year-old boy and Gunilla, an elderly woman in the small town of Linkoping. Detective John makes a promise of quickly finding the killer and traps himself in the case. Ignoring the strains on his marriage and his reputation, he rigorously investigates for 16 years.
Things do not look promising till John learns of the Golden State Killer being caught 44 years later thanks to ancestry mapping. Desperate, the detective enlists the help of a genealogist, Per who is a history buff and has his own way of working. As they clash heads, the threat of time looms over them as the investigation is to be handed to the cold case unit in a matter of days.
The Breakthrough Season 1 starts off strong. The first two episodes capture the emptiness and shock of the bereaved families, the witness and the police. The small-town charm of Linkoping is further emphasized by the old-school technology of the 2000s and how cut off The Breakthrough’s reality is from the rest of the world. It further tugs heartstrings as we note Adnan’s toy analog watch and how he won’t grow up to see how much technology has advanced.
The Netflix show slows down for character exploration, allowing the ensemble cast to show off their acting range with how much the characters are affected by the shocking incident. John’s family becomes a casualty as he does his best to keep his promise. And right when viewers may get bored, it speeds up and implements time lapses. Despite skimming over 16 years, the same urgency of solving the case back in 2004 remains.
Unfortunately, this is where The Breakthrough Season 1 fizzles out. The remaining two episodes abandon the emotional narrative for the sake of focusing on Per’s genealogical mapping. But since they cannot fit all of the logic of the technique in such a short time, all we get is a shoddy, incomplete explanation that is difficult to follow and boring. And we are not here for a lecture on genealogy.
The show suddenly imagines itself as a true crime documentary and believes that the viewers who have tuned in for a high-octane fictional crime thriller will be interested in the nitty-gritty of Per’s research. It is this assumption that ruins the second half of Season 1.
Even when the investigative bit is wrapped up, the finale struggles to get back on the thriller train, giving us an anticlimactic ending with a poorly-written secondary character suddenly getting the spotlight. Simply put, The Breakthrough Season 1 cannot make up its mind whether it wants to be a fictional crime thriller or a non-fiction study of genealogy in solving the case.
It probably would have worked better as a documentary that focuses on Per’s technique, the ethics behind it and the resources needed, but guess we’ll never know now.
If you are curious about how similar the Netflix show is to the real-life events, check out our Ending Explained article on The Breakthrough.
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Verdict - 4/10
4/10