A body on the beach, a police protagonist with personal issues and an eye for knitwear … UKTV’s Icelandic import is dark, matter of fact and a little bit meta
After The Valhalla Murders, you wait ages for another Icelandic noir, then two come along at once. Hot on the heels of Walter Presents’ Sisterhood is Black Sands (Alibi), the channel’s first foreign-language drama and another series that portrays the famously low-on-crime nation as a hotspot for mysterious deaths and small-town secrets that threaten to consume everyone around them. By the end of the first episode, it had reeled me in, though it took its time getting there.
It is shot, with glorious gothic moodiness, around the famous black sands of Reynisfjara. The sun is low and the clouds are grey. Viewers who found House of the Dragon too dark may wish to hover one finger over the brightness settings, as this revels in its gloom. Like many a crime thriller before it, it begins with the discovery of a body on the beach, though this particular dead body is wearing sensible outdoor clothing. Has the young woman fallen from the mountainous terrain above, or is that nasty cut on her head the result of something, or someone, far more sinister?
