Beck offers up understated excellence in the form of a Swedish crime drama. There are several seasons of Beck. I have been fortunate enough to watch two and four, with English subtitles. Unlike many US shows, the Swedish approach to crime drama is modest and down to earth. For me, this approach makes the characters and story, far more accessible and believable. The crime stories Beck and his team investigate are in many ways familiar. This obstacle is overcome by quality narrative and fleshed out characterizations, that really lift this series above the ordinary. A good cast of well known Swedish actors, does this series no harm either. In short Beck is a a worthwhile watch, I can happily recommend. Nine out of ten from me.

Beck is a solid series and Beck is a good detective with a terrible blind spot when it comes to his daughter who is a selfish pain in the arse. She is a great taker and she knows how to play her father. She constantly hits him up for money as she perpetually makes bad choices. And her actions have indirectly been responsible for deaths, but Martin never seems to catch on that he has fathered a completely selfish adult. While no one is a better detective or friend then Beck, when it comes to his life he is in denial about his personal choices. His relationship with co-worker Lena Klingstrom frustrates them both because of his indecision.  And when Beck has to make a decision about going forward with anyone, he generally wusses out Beck has an able assistant in Gunvald Larsson, but Gunvald can be hot-tempered and has a problem with authority, especially with women in authority; and he is a bit of an instigator who likes to create fiction among colleagues he doesn't like. Yet, he is a solid cop who always has Beck's back. As we move along from series to series, we get exposure to more of Gunvald's background and understand his complex characterization. Best scene with essence of character is Gunvald heading into a biker bar and pulling his out his gun and checking it's loaded and cocked. When his younger associate, Oskar, asks if he thinks that will be necessary, Gunvald says he hopes so.Lena Klingstrom is brought into the team initially for her IT skills but those seem to fade away as the series goes forward. At one point, she just disappears and it isn't until a later season we find she had transferred to another district. She returns eventually but her relationship with Beck has now completely changed.Oskar Bergman is the tyro of the team who Gunvald treats with complete disdain much to the displeasure of his co-workers but no one really steps in to halt it. But as we near the end of the series, Oskar has his heroic moment when he saves his boss.Beck also has the neighbor from Hell in Grannen who provides humor in what can otherwise be a dark depressive series. Some of the murders in this series include cutting bodies into parts while victims are alive, skinning them while alive, burying them alive, killing just for the joy of killing, dealing with corporate misadventures, and a variety of bosses from bikers to board rooms. The mysteries can be excellent whodunits with lots of twists you don't see coming. Other times we know who is guilty but have to wait and see how Beck finally puts the clues together. When things get too depressive, Grannen's character becomes even more bizarre and laughable. He constantly wears a neck collar which we assume is his key to obtain medical benefits because we never see him at work just frequently drinking telling Beck outrageous stories of his misspent life. And without a doubt, you will roar at some of his antics.The series spans about twenty years from 1997 to 2016, and Beck goes through several partners and bosses which keeps the series fresh and topical. While Beck gets close to women, there is always something that steps in and ends what might be a promising relationship.The biggest purely physical change takes place between series one and two. The station house Beck works in goes from 20th to 21st Century in a huge leap. In series one everything is old and crappy; and in series two everything has become ultra-modern, even the doors to the various offices now slide open as the detectives have hand held remotes just for that purpose. However, those remotes disappear pretty quickly as the writers must have seen how ridiculous they were.Beck also undergoes some changes from maverick detective to more organization man. If you can, try to watch the episodes in order to better understand who the players are and why they disappear and reappear. You will also notice as the series became more popular, the producers found more money which shows up in the opening sequences which become more sophisticated, to Beck finally getting his own theme song.Beck is a solid series and well worth the time but don't get attached to any of the characters as you can't be sure of a return.

After having exhausted, it seemed, the supply of British mystery/police-procedural series, I turned my attention to foreign (non-English-language) productions. If you are not averse to subtitles, you will find among foreign productions some outstanding series in this genre, and "Beck" is one of them. "Beck" – after "Wallander" and "Van Veeteren" – is the third Swedish-language police- procedural series I have watched, and it may be the best, which is high praise. I should qualify that by saying I have watched only the first 18 episodes of "Beck" (produced from 1997 to 2005), available in the USA as sets 1 through 6. Eight subsequent episodes have been produced and released on DVD, but not yet, as far as I can tell, with Region 1 encoding. "Beck," which aired as a Swedish TV series from 1997 to 2009, is based on the books of Mai Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö in which Inspector Martin Beck, the lead detective of a special homicide team of the Swedish police, was the central character. I gather that the team (in this series) is based in Stockholm, but the crimes they investigate are not limited to that city. Each episode is approximately 90 minutes in length and represents a complete case. I found the stories to be uniformly engrossing, and in several there were twists at the end that I did not see coming. Tying the episodes together is a cadre of well-cast, well-acted characters that appear in all, or nearly all, episodes, and other characters whose tenure spans fewer episodes. Three characters, who appear in all episodes, merit special mention: Beck: level-headed, insightful, possessed of more of an everyman quality than most leading characters (he reminded me of my junior high biology teacher); Gunvald, Beck's right-hand man: brash, swaggering, politically incorrect, tough – the iron fist in Beck's velvet glove; Grannen: Beck's wonderfully eccentric neighbor - he rarely failed to make me laugh. Note: As a result of having read a user review (on another site) that lauded the series but was critical of the quality of the video transfer, especially in light of the fact the reviewer considered the DVD sets to be pricey, I purchased just one set and was attentive to image quality when I watched the first episode. What I found was that the video transfer is not state of the art but neither is it bad. More importantly, it quickly ceased to be an issue as I was pulled into the series. And after I finished the first set, I purchased the remaining five.

This series has been around for quite a few years, and it has been airing as of lately on the MHz Network during the international mystery and drama hour each week. I'm quite enjoying it—as aforementioned by other users, the two main actors, Haber and Persbrandt (who play Martin Beck and Gunvald Larsson, respectively) are phenomenal at interpreting the roles they are assigned. The series is well-written, and each character has a great deal of personality—the viewer is able to grow with the characters as they continue their assignments throughout the series. That being said, the other actors deserve applause as well.I would definitely recommend this program to other fans of mystery and suspense... I think this series is a bit under-appreciated where I am (I'm not from Sweden), and it deserves more publicity here, although it isn't as recent as many other shows.