Der Usedom-Krimi (The Usedom Mysteries, but marketed in English-speaking countries as The Nordic Murders) is a German Nordic Noir series set on the island of Usedom
in the Baltic Sea, which is divided between Germany and Poland.
The series centres around Karin Lossow, a disgraced former public prosecutor who has returned to her old home on Usedom after serving a prison sentence for the murder of her husband, who she shot with the service weapon of her daughter Julia, a police officer who is now the highest-ranking detective on the German half of the island. Despite her lack of official position and the continued hostility of some of her neighbours, she cannot resist becoming involved in her daughter's cases, while an overarching mystery remains as to why she killed her husband.
The series has been broadcast at irregular intervals as a series of Made For TV Movies since 2014 in Germany on Das Erste. Channel 4 has broadcast the series arranged into "seasons" on their channel More 4 in the UK since 2020. Episodes so far have been:
- "Mörderhus"/"Murder House" (2014)
- "Schandfleck"/"Eyesore" (2015)
- "Engelmacher"/"Angel Maker" (2016)
- "Nebelwand"/"Smokescreen" (2017)
- "Trugspur"/"False Trail" (2017)
- "Winterlicht"/"Winterlight" (2019)
- "Geisterschiff"/"Ghost Ship" (2019)
- "Mutterliebe"/"Mother Love" (2019)
- "Strandgut"/"Flotsam" (2019)
- "Träume"/"Dreams" (2019)
- "Nachtschatten"/"Nightshade" (2020)
- "Schmertzgrenze"/"Pain Threshold" (2020)
- "Vom Geben und Nehmen"/"Give and Take" (2020)
- "Entführt"/"Kidnapped" (2021)
- "Ungebetene Gäste"/"Uninvited Guests" (2021)
- "Der lange Abschied"/"The Long Goodbye" (2021)
This series contains examples of the following tropes:
- Bowdlerise: The English subbed version translates the German verb "ficken" as "to shag", which understates things.
- Break the Haughty: Brunner suffers grief and humiliation throughout "Schmertzgrenze" when his elderly mother dies, it turns out that her nurse, who Brunner was having an affair with, was abusing her, and the nurse then gets murdered and Brunner is suspected by the police and media.
- Call to Agriculture: After returning to Usedom, Karin takes a job as receptionist, gardener and animal handler at a bison farm.
- Cliffhanger: "Schandfleck" ends with a murder attempt on Julia, which isn't revealed to have been unsuccessful until "Engelmacher".
- December–December Romance: In later episodes, Karin has a romance with ageing Polish police detective Lucjan Gardocha.
- Granola Girl: Julia's teenage daughter Sophie, an environmentalist activist whose penchant for direct action causes trouble for her mother.
- Killed Off for Real: In "Winterlicht", Julia is taken prisoner by a group of Polish criminals, and despite doing her best to escape them, is murdered by them.
- Little Old Lady Investigates: Although she is a former prosecutor and a convicted killer.
- Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: In "Der lange Abschied", Ellen's mother, now in prison, claims to her that she was conceived in an affair between her and Karin's husband, and that this was Karin's motive for the murder. Ellen steals a piece of Karin's husband's bloody shirt from the police archive intending to have their DNA compared, but changes her mind.
- Missing Mum: Ellen's mother, a friend of Karin, mysteriously disappeared when she was a little girl. She reappears in "Entführt", and turns out to be a deranged narcissist who kidnaps Ellen's baby son in order to get back at Karin.
- Mystery of the Week: Unusually for Nordic Noir TV shows, which generally have a single over-arching case, it has a different crime each episode, due to being a series of Made For TV Movies in Germany.
- Nordic Noir: Despite being made in Germany. Usedom is one of the northern extremes of Germany and has a Scandinavian-influenced culture.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: The current island public prosecutor Dr. Brunner, a smug smoothie who wants to wrap up every case as smoothly as possible regardless of whether the most obvious suspect is actually guilty.
- Oh, Crap!: Brunner's reaction when it turns out that the sexy middle-aged female tourist he was trying to chat up is Witt's life-partner, and also a much more senior public prosecutor.
- Rape and Revenge: The resolution of "Nachtschatten" is that the boy who died in the sauna was the rapist, and the raped girl locked him in there as revenge. To make matters even worse, she was raped again immediately afterwards while she was passed out by a perverted neighbour, and then hunted him down and unsuccessfully attempted to kill him.
- Rasputinian Death: The victim in "Schandfleck" was hit over the head with a bottle in a forest and left unconscious by a panicking attacker, recovered consciousness suffering from hypothermia, and staggered confusedly out onto a road, where she was hit by a car.
- Remember the New Guy?: During Ellen's maternity leave and afterwards, the Usedom detective force is supplemented with Rainer Witt, Karin's nephew who previously worked in Munich, but has never been mentioned. Justified since many of Karin's friends and relatives disowned her when she murdered her husband.
- Suicide by Assassin: Turns out, in a very messy way, to have led to the death in "Der lange Abschied". Ulf, dying of cancer, tried to get his girlfriends Eva and Renate to shoot him dead in the forest and make it look like either murder or a hunting accident, so they could receive his life insurance payout. Unfortunately, they all got drunk and stoned, Renate changed her mind, and while fighting for the gun with Ulf she was shot dead by a random fourth party in a genuine hunting accident. Ulf, due to his intoxicated condition and general emotionally-overwrought state, falsely believed that he had killed her and confessed.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: After Julia is murdered, she is replaced by another female police detective, Ellen Norgaard, who isn't a relative of Karin but has a tense relationship with her, as Karin was a friend of her Missing Mum.
- Sympathetic Adulterer: While happily married to her husband Stefan, Julia is having an affair with Marek, her Polish opposite number on the other half of the island, who she frequently collaborates with on cases.
- Taking the Heat: In "Schmerzgrenze", it is revealed that Fuhrmann falsely confessed to shaking his baby grandson to death so that his daughter, who had actually done it, would not go to prison.
- Those Two Guys: The two Usedom uniformed cops, Brendel and Martens. A mixed-gender example.
- Uptight Loves Wild: With Stefan, a homebody businessman, and Julia, who despite being a cop is still quite spontaneous and apparently was quite delinquent as a teenager before joining the force.
- Wild Teen Party: "Nachtschatten" deals with a drug-fueled teen party that ends with a girl being raped and a boy being locked in a sauna to die from heatstroke.
