Der Pass (
Pagan Peak) – Season 2
I recommended the first season of this elsewhere some time back:
Has anyone mentioned Der Pass (rather unnecessarily rebranded as Pagan Peak for the US audience)?
A predictably po-faced Guardian review had it down as a rip-off of The Bridge, which is desperately unfair; it does use the cross border motif, and there is in fact a credit to Endemol for the format - but there's no real similarity beyond the basics.
Strangely posed dead body found high on the Austrian/German border. Mountains, forests, a healthy dose of the shivers; it has Krampuses, oh yes…Krampuses - but this is more neo-pagan, psycho survivalist, anti-modernity, eco-terror, blood and soil type stuff than full blown supernatural shenanigans.
Very watchable, and occasionally disturbing - a believable premise and an eerily convincing loon at its core. I found the female lead to be somewhat unengaging, but her amoral Austrian counterpart – played by Nicholas Ofczarek, lumbering around in clothes that make him look like a once handsome sofa that’s been thrown off a bridge – has a highly attractive dose of the Noirs about him, and could probably hold a series down all by himself.
Not perfect, but very watchable - I thoroughly enjoyed it.
The latest story is more of a fit for the serial killer genre, which,
as a genre, I have little time for – having become tired of the associated tropes almost immediately post
Manhunter. So, the fact that there’s nothing particularly tricksy about the way the serial killer aspect appears in
Der Pass is, to me, a selling point; and it’s possibly because of this lack of overwrought artifice – the fact that not every plot-hole and narrative leap is papered over via the
deus ex machina of the smugly savant psychopath - that the subject is covered about as effectively as I can remember. (Admittedly the villain
is a very talented musician. But the crucial thing is that he’s not talented enough. It’s not achievement that marks out this protagonist, but privilege and its discontents.)
It helps that Dominic Marcus Singer, who plays the killer, is excellent. Outward charm and a genuine likableness, camouflaging a catastrophically socially and emotionally fractured individual; the character has a kind of vulnerability that seems utterly at odds with the murderously sadistic aspect of his nature, and there’s a seamlessness to the portrayal of these elements that seems to me to place the character – and the acting - somewhat outside the usual fare.
For those who like atmosphere and environment to be as characterful as the human protagonists,
Der Pass also hits the bullseye. The landscape is a major character. Set in the stunning Zill Valley, this is not the land of chocolate box alpine scenery of crisp blue skies and snow covered peaks, but that of Caspar David Friedrich and the awesome, overbearing beauty of the Romantic poets – a sublime but pitiless leviathan, its enormous bulk hunched over the tiny lives of those who pass through it, ready to swat away the individual like a mote of dust at any time. The atmosphere is fantastic: heavy, dark and ominous - and stunningly beautiful at the same time.
Local lore and myth are an important (but not overriding) element to the storytelling - and there’s detail to whet an esoterically minded appetite. The story begins with the increasingly dark telling of a local fairy tale - which reflects the local belief that the landscape is both a source of the good things in life, but also a demon haunted place. There’s lore connected to hunting (an integral element of the story), and traditions around the ‘last breath’. The Krampus – an important element of Season 1 – makes a guest appearance. But I’ve not been able to discover the exact significance of the tin plates with writing on them, nailed up in threshold areas in some of the rural homes; they are referenced in the story, but their significance isn’t made totally clear (although it’s logical to assume some sort of apotropaic threshold totem).
The lumbering Nicholas Ofczarek (who plays Gedeon Winter – the Austrian half of the double act) is still impressive, and Julia Jentsch (The German, Ellie Stocker) has grown on me. In fact, all the acting is top notch.
As stated, the first series of
Der Pass is based on a different sort of crime, but you really need to watch it to understand Season 2.
Season 1 got mixed reviews – very well regarded by some, it also (somewhat inexplicably to me – as I’m about the pickiest and most hard to please TV/Movie watcher I know) got some quite poor reviews, including one from the
Guardian which was – quite frankly - borderline cretinous.
Season 2 is excellent, and I don’t care what anyone else says – it is now firmly in my list of top half dozen crime dramas since
Forbrydelsen.
