The Killing is an American Crime and Mystery series created by Veena Sud based on Forbrydelsen, a Danish series I didn’t watch.

Sarah Linden, played by Mireille Enos, is a detective in the city of Seattle on her last day of work, before moving to another state to get married. On this last day, she is accompanied by Stephen Holder, played by Joel Kinnaman, the guy who came to replace her.

In this last day of work, they discover the body of a teenager, Rosie Larsen, played by Katie Findlay, inside the trunk of a car. Sarah becomes very involved with the case and misses her flight to California.

Eventually, Sarah’s dedication to the case makes her miss so many flights that her fiancé Rick played by Callum Keith Rennie, decides to break up. That leaves Sarah and Holder as partners investigating the crime.

In season 1 and 2, the pair investigate the death of Rosie Larsen and all the political drama surrounding the mayor candidate Darren Richmond played by Billy Campbell, with the possible relation between his campaign and her death.

In the third season, Sarah Linden is unconvincingly happy after she stopped working as a homicide detective, but then she is lured into the work again, this time to investigate a series of murders after several corpses are found in a pond.

The victims are teenage girls, all homeless and runaways, a very vulnerable population, perfect for a serial killer.

During the investigation, Holder befriends Bullet played by Bex Taylor-Klaus, a homeless girl who was a friend of one of the victims. Linden has an affair with the boss James Skinner played by Elias Koteas and Ray Seward played by Peter Sarsgaard is in the death row for a murder committed by this serial killer.

The last season was picked up by Netflix after the AMC canceled the show twice. This season served to wrap things up and give it a proper ending, I’m not saying it’s a good ending, just not abrupt with lose ends.

The case is in the rich neighborhoods, where a family is found murdered except for the son, Kyle Stansbury played by Tyler Ross, who survived the attack. At the same time, Linden and Holder have to deal with the absurd effects left by the events of the third season.

The cast is really good, and their acting is amazing. Not counting the main duo, there are three actors that I particularly liked a lot: Brent Sexton as Stanley Larsen, the father of Rosie, the first victim; Bex Taylor-Klaus as Bullet and Peter Sarsgaard as Ray Seward.

Peter Sarsgaard is particularly noticeable because he is more of a background character and has one episode to shine, and he does it perfectly. However, the three are amazing and have huge emotional moments.

As for the two main faces, we have Mireille Enos and Joel Kinnaman, and I liked Kinnaman more than I liked Enos. I think his character is more likable, while hers is a little annoying, especially during her romance with the boss.

Joel Kinnaman would later become more famous, working on titles like the less than mediocre Suicide Squad from 2016 and another Netflix Series Alter Carbon from 2018, being an important supporting character and the protagonist respectively.

Stephen Holder (Kinnaman’s character in The Killing) is a little immature sometimes, but have nice humor and a very good heart, his interactions with Bullet are a bright spot, one of the best, if not the best, in the whole series.

The Killing became one of my favorite series because it’s a style I like, very dark and depressing. The character’s melancholia with the desaturated colors and a dark theme made the series something remarkable to me.

One thing I like about the characters is their humanity, like the detectives contrasting with those detectives we are used to in popular culture in general, who solve crimes flawlessly because they are so much more intelligent than everybody else.

The handling of the murder cases is also humane, being about the people involved, like the victims and their families, which makes us invest emotionally in the events. If you’re waiting for generic victims, sci-fi crime-solving technology, and super detectives, you’re not going to find it in The Killing.

Surely, there are some problems and the thing I liked the least is how the plot leads to a very clear suspect to create suspense, to later reveal that the suspect was just ashamed to tell his/her alibi for some reason.
I lost count of how many times we are sure about who was guilty because all the evidence points to this or that suspect, but oops, I guess we’re were wrong.

In real crimes, the simple explanation is more often than not the real explanation. The partner is usually the police’s first suspect for a reason, and the reason is that the partner is usually the one who did it.

I know this choice by the showrunner is good to raise the suspense, but on the other hand, it lost on the reality side.

Now, before I finish it, I need to explain that instead of giving Stars to rate the shows or the movies, I give it Moons, just to keep it under the theme. So I will always give a rating between 1 and 10 Moons, without decimals.

So, to conclude, The Killing is a great show with a lot of emotion and humanity, its qualities exceed its flaws immensely, even not being perfect, and that’s why I’m giving it 9 Moons.