A Syrian academic is giving a very public lecture on music when the Swedish Security Police (SAPO) swoop in and arrest him in front of an outraged crowd. They say he’s a threat to public safety; details beyond that are stamped top secret. For Fredrika Bergman (Liv Mjönes), a former detective now working for the Ministry of Justice, the lack of information about the case is frustrating to say the least – until pressure is put on the SAPO from a very unexpected direction.
Fredrika Bergman (Liv Mjönes). Credit: Jo Voets / Kärnfilm / Lunanime
The first is a demand to release the academic. The second is to release all files on something known as “Operation Tennyson”. SAPO is putting a crack team together to handle the situation, which is getting trickier by the minute (for starters, the pilot refuses to turn the plane around, believing it’s safer to continue to the USA). First on the team list for SAPO agent Eden Lundell (Ana Gil de Melo Nascimento) is Bergman. Second on the list – but not by Lundell’s choice - is Bergman’s former partner, Alex Recht (Jonas Karlsson).
“Didn’t he leave the police to go and have a breakdown?” says Lundell. And yes, while he might have once been a legendary detective, now he looks shabby, is currently “between jobs”, and could barely manage picking up his son’s children to drop them off at school. But his son (Adam Lundgren) is the co-pilot on the plane. With everything that’s to come, and the pilot not cooperating, that personal connection just might come in handy.
Adam Lundgren as pilot Erik Recht. Credit: Jo Voets / Kärnfilm / Lunanime
If while watching Hostage you get the feeling that Recht and Bergman have a bit of unseen history together, you’re not wrong. While Hostage (Kapningen in the original Swedish) is a stand-alone series, the characters of Recht and Bergman (and actors Karlsson and Mjönes) previously appeared in the crime procedural Stockholm Requiem. Back then Recht and Bergman were detectives who teamed up to investigate murders in (where else?) Stockholm; clearly a lot has changed in both their lives since then.
That series was a traditional crime mystery series, based on the Recht and Bergman series of novels by Kristina Ohlsson. Considering the sharp swerve into international thriller territory, it’s a little surprising to discover that Hostage is also based on a Recht and Bergman novel – or at least, it’s surprising until you discover that, unlike the other novels in the series, here Ohlsson was writing from personal experience.
Like most actual spies, she doesn’t have “spy” on her resume. Rather, up until 2012 (the year she published Hostage), she worked at various times as a “security policy analyst and advisor” for the Swedish Security Police, their Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Norwegian Defence Academy, before becoming a “counter terrorism officer” for the not-at-all spy-sounding Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. International terrorism requiring inter-agency co-operation? That’s something she knows a little about.
Alex Recht (Jonas Karlsson) at work in a race against time. Credit: Jo Voets / Kärnfilm / Lunanime
Right from the start Hostage is full of the kind of small but telling details that make it feel a cut above the usual hijack drama. The clock might be ticking, but for the agents on the ground there’s no easy answers, no calling out the airforce to escort the plane somewhere safe. The series goes out of its way to avoid cliches with the characters too. Lundell is hard-nosed, rude and ruthless; Recht is the soft and emotional one, torn between doing his duty and his love for his son.
The SAPO team are on the back foot from the start – they’re dealing with multiple agencies and agendas (even within their own agents). They’re not even sure why they’re holding onto the academic, as the US requested his arrest and deportation. And on the plane, the crew have no idea if the hijackers are amongst them, while the passengers are kept in the dark – literally, when the hijackers cut off the power again.
Finding the terrorists, preventing the bomb from going off and saving 400 lives would be a massive job for Recht and Bergman even when they were at the top of their game. Here’s hoping Recht’s best days aren’t behind him.
Hostage is streaming now at SBS On Demand.
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Hostage
