Summary
The Glass Dome is the quintessential Scandi noir in many respects, but it’s a very solid take on the format, with well-drawn characters and a bleak beauty, juggling the procedural elements of a thriller with the psychological ones of a more intimate character study.
Look, you know how these things work. In an episode or so, The Glass Dome sketches one of the more familiar outlines of a quintessential Scandi noir in recent memory, from the troubled protagonist to the isolated small town, with its intimate social circles, long-held secrets, and controversial development that is annoying all the locals (it’s a mine, in this case.) A little girl goes missing. Everyone is a suspect. You know the drill.
But that isn’t the half of it. Here’s a psychological thriller that says, essentially, “hold my beer” to the myriad other half-hearted efforts ever-squatting in Netflix’s interminable thumbnails. Created by Swedish crime author Camilla Läckberg, The Glass Dome uses its familiar framework as the skeleton of a proper whodunnit, with both genuine twists and turns but also, crucially, a well-developed thematic through-line about generational trauma, cyclical history, and family, both biological and otherwise. It’s a nattily-written and admirably performed six-parter that builds to something satisfying and worthwhile instead of running to Netflix execs with cap in hand in the hopes of a second season.
Plot-wise, the fun topic here is child abduction. As made clear by sporadic early flashbacks and a bit of clunky expositional dialogue, the defining event in the past of criminologist Lejla Ness (Leonie Vincent) is being nabbed as a child and confined to a glass box by an unidentified abductor. The experience hasn’t harmed her career prospects, since the premiere finds her lecturing in the U.S. until she’s suddenly summoned back to her isolated home town of Granås by her adoptive father and former police commissioner, Valter (Johan Hedenberg). But mentally, she’s not exactly even keel. You don’t readily get over that kind of thing.
And Granås isn’t interested in letting Lejla off the hook. She has been in town for about five minutes – to attend the funeral of her adoptive mother, Ann-Marie – when she finds her friend Louise (Gina-Lee Fahlén Ronander) dead and realizes her daughter Alicia (Minoo Andacheh) is missing. Someone has taken her. History is repeating. And given The Glass Dome is a Scandi noir, it’s virtually inevitable that the kidnapping is related to Lejla’s past and to the mine that Alicia’s father, Said, is intimately involved in.
la Langhammer as Jorun in The Glass Dome/Glaskupan Cr. Courtesy of Netflix ©
Given her vocation and familial connection to local law enforcement, Lejla would probably be best positioned to investigate the crime anyway. But she’s obligated in other ways, from social expectations to the opportunity to confront her own demons, which have never quite left her. It’s a neat balance between procedural practicality and emotional responsibility, and it allows The Glass Dome to work as both a mystery-thriller and a character study without one detracting from the other.
You don’t need me to tell you what it looks like, at least. The chilly, inhospitable surroundings have the expected natural beauty but also a dense feeling of terror, like anything could be peeping out from behind a tree or over a ridge. It isn’t that kind of show, of course – the horrors are all decidedly human-shaped – but it has the off-kilter vibe of one, that weird juxtaposition between an expansive, picturesque landscape and the oppressively isolated town that nestles inside it, where everyone knows everyone; except what they might be hiding, and what they might be capable of.
A lot of this works because of the sheer quality of the craft, from how the whole thing’s shot to the performances, especially Vincent in the lead role. It’s not a showy turn; she isn’t a drunk or a drug addict (unless mushrooms count) or a maniac, but she finds a captivating restlessness that comes out in small details, making it clear she’s smart and switched-on but also run ragged by unresolved internal trauma. The supporting cast is solid too, but Lejla occupies a lot of focus, so the onus is on her to handle the psychological drama baggage, which she does admirably. But The Glass Dome nonetheless moves like a straight-up thriller, with all the twists, turns, and red herrings you’d expect in a pacey six-part series designed to be gulped down in one sitting.
It could be argued that the series begins better than it finishes, but the payoff is satisfying enough, and the journey to get there is guided by a compelling performance and a beautiful setting full of believable relationships and details. You can’t move for these kinds of shows on streaming platforms, which will always make it harder for them to stand out individually, but this is one that deserves a look from genre fans, at the very least.
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