The foreign language platform Walter Presents has bagged its first Icelandic drama with the sombre, grey-washed Sisterhood (Channel 4). Despite Iceland having one of the lowest crime rates in the world – last October, the prison population of the entire country stood at 150 people – it seems that it is still more than capable of hosting a bleak drama about grim crimes. Murders may be scarce, but why should that stop its detectives getting their teeth stuck into one?
Cleverly, Sisterhood makes a feature of it. When human bones are discovered at a new quarry (“They were digging under the lava,” says the local sheriff, in a line you definitely wouldn’t hear in the latest ITV gruff detective series), investigator Einar’s first assumption is that they must be ancient. His colleague Vera points out that one of the teeth has a filling, so they might need to move away from the history books. So few people go missing in Iceland that Vera can name each unsolved disappearance, since 1982, off the top of her head.
