In this episode, the second in BBC Four's season of BECK mysteries, our intrepid heroes (Peter Haber, Mikael Persbrandt) investigate a murder case at a Stockholm hotel involving a seventeen-year-old girl, a teenage brat (Filip Berg), his father (Niklas Hjulström) and a couple of car thieves. The denouement is satisfyingly surprising in the way it frustrates our expectations as to who the murderer actually is.
What makes this episode so interesting is the way in which director Mårten Klingberg uses the material to make some significant social commentary on contemporary Swedish life. The police try to find the car-thieves by going into a rundown housing estate, and by doing so incite a riot. The responsibility for this lies with Beck's boss, who decides to send in police with full protective gear rather than adopting a softly-softly approach, which might have worked better. Such bungled operations only serve to make Beck's task of solving the case that much more difficult.
In investigating the murder, Beck becomes involved in the sleazy underworld of the night-club. Presided over by a good-for-nothing owner (Ulf Stenberg) who spends his day-times training in a gym, the club willingly tolerates underage party-goers who end up getting stoned and hence not in control of themselves. It seems as if the sole aim of such people is to squeeze as much money as possible out of youngsters. In this mind of hedonistic environment it's hardly surprising that teenagers put their lives at risk. Gunvald Larsson (Persbrandt) discovers this in the nick of time, as he rescues his teenage niece from the club.
BECK contains some of the clichés associated with the detective genre - the lonely cops going back to empty homes and trying to cope with complicated personal lives. Nonetheless there are some amusing variations on familiar themes; in the evening Beck comes out on his apartment balcony to exchange pleasantries with an aging eccentric who might be fantasizing about his daily experiences. Beck's expression remains deadpan throughout, although it's clear that such moments provide him with much-needed comic relief.
