It is understandable that Malin Persson Giolito was not satisfied with Netflix’s “In your hands”
Published 2024-04-24 09.00
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full screen “In your hands”. Photo: Martin Wichardt/Netflix.
TV REVIEW Netflix’s new Swedish series “In dina händer” explores difficult and highly topical issues about children who shoot children. But almost completely forgets to give us a comprehensible backstory to the drama that unfolds.
In your hands
Netflix
Five parts
By Alex Haridi and Amanda Högberg, with Olle Strand, Yasir Hassan, Ardalan Esmaili, Yusra Warsama, Mohamed Abdirahman Koje, Solomon Njie, Ane Dahl Torp, Mahmut Suvakci, Mattias Nordkvist, Henrik Norlén.
THRILLING DRAMA. Nowadays, Netflix makes Swedish original series at very regular intervals, but the very first, which is still one of the best, was 2019’s “Biggest of all”, about a school shooting in Djursholm.
It was based on a book by Malin Persson Giolitoand so is “In your hands” – but this time the writer, who was initially part of the script team, has chosen to remove her name from the production, as she no longer wants it to be marketed with it.
The situation is hardly beneficial for anyone. Not for Netflix. Not for the main screenwriter Alex Haridithe producers Frida Asp and Fatima Varhos or the director Anna Zackrisson. And also not for Persson Giolito, who of course can remove his name in theory but in practice will have to live with it being mentioned just about everywhere in connection with the premiere. Because “In your hands” is, after all, her story.
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full screen Photo: Andréas Lennartsson/Netflix
It is about the urgent social problem of gang crime and little boys with guns, and just like in “The Greatest of All” the issue is not he comes who did it without why it happened.
Why did Dogge shoot (Olle Strand) killed his best friend Billy (Yasir Hassan) on a playground?
The puzzle is put together piece by piece, by the committed policeman Farid (Ardalan Esmaili) and with the help of flashbacks, and a sad picture emerges of two boys who were inseparable, until they went down the wrong road and reality came between them.
It is wistful, heavy and well played, not least by Strand, who expresses a lot with little means. But while Billy’s life and family situation in a vulnerable area, with an absent father and a mother (Yusra Warsama) who, while doing the best she can but obviously not enough for her many children, is drawn understandably, Dogge’s downward spiral is never quite understandable.
What we learn about his father (Henrik Norlen) and mother (Ane Dahl Torp) gives some clues, but it is not enough to explain how a son of a well-to-do Swedish middle-class couple in a bright and fresh villa became a child soldier in the town.
And even the character Farid would have benefited from a little more care.
It is by no means bad, but it is obvious that a couple of links in the story are missing.
“In your hands” premieres on Netflix on April 24.
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full screen Photo: Martin Wichardt/Netflix
