There’s a big caveat for anyone reading this and confused over Wisting series three. For viewers in the UK, series three of Wisting, airing on the BBC, differs from the version originally shown in Norway. For the UK (and many other international audiences), series three—aired in two parts several months apart—comprises what was originally broadcast in Scandinavia as series four and five.

With that confusion resolved, the two separate story arcs mean the mid-season break makes sense. While the two parts follow chronologically and have some overlap in background character development, it is worth thinking of them as two distinct narratives, as per the original broadcast pattern, each with a very different tempo and drive.

The first four episodes are a straight-to-TV plot, not featured in author Jørn Lier Horst’s existing Wisting novels, and they form the stronger storyline in this hybrid series.

When a young boy goes missing from his family’s hotel and a member of staff is found brutally murdered on the grounds, Inspector Wisting is brought in but soon discovers the family aren’t telling him the full story.

The family have plenty of dark secrets, cleverly revealed over the four episodes, with enough material to fuel the requisite twists, turns, and red herrings of any good police procedural.

Business rivalry, infidelity, drug smuggling, and child abuse all feature in this complex yet compelling story.

Sven Nordin, as the title character, has made the role his own—a detective known for his attention to detail but attuned to the human suffering around him. Like previous Wisting instalments, his personal life overlaps with his professional one, with daughter Line (Thea Green Lundberg) and son Thomas (Fredrik Stenberg Ditlev-Simonsen, taking over the role from this season) both drawn, unwittingly, into the investigation.

Nordin’s portrayal of Wisting has always been a subtle one, as much conveyed through emotion as through words, and that technique really comes to the fore in these episodes, with a father having to come to terms with his child’s tortured past through the lens of a professional police officer. There’s much left unsaid, but it is in those powerful silences that the true drama lies. Henrik Georgsson’s direction ramps up the tension as the clock ticks to find the missing boy.

There are plenty of action sequences, including an armed boat chase through the Norwegian fjords, but like Lier Horst’s source material, this story is character-driven first and foremost.

For the second half of this hybrid story, we return to the series’ literary roots with an adaptation of the Wisting novel A Question of Guilt. Following on chronologically from the previous four episodes, this arc feels very different in tone and pace.

Wisting is on sick leave following events at the end of the first story arc, but that doesn’t stop his investigative instincts from kicking in when he receives an anonymous tip-off about an old, closed case—the murder of a young girl.

When another murder occurs, questions begin to be asked about the validity of the previous investigation and conviction.

Throw in a sideline trip to Latvia, and it soon becomes a complex web of multiple convictions and investigations. Add in some unexpected romance for Wisting, hints at police corruption and cover-ups, and it becomes something of a challenge to keep up.

There’s a sense that there is more material here than four episodes can contain. Subplots, including the romantic entanglement, are introduced and then discarded without resolution. Family issues within the Wisting household—son Thomas’ struggle for acceptance as a gay man and daughter Line’s pregnancy—seem rushed and almost like an afterthought.

It is, however, Nordin’s portrayal of Wisting that keeps this second, more muddled half still compelling viewing. The Norwegian tendency towards emotional restraint is enshrined in Wisting’s behaviour, though Nordin peppers it with just the right amount of humanity to give us a detective utterly believable in his struggles.

With a new Wisting book, The Traitor, published at the end of 2024, there’s no sign that the appetite for one of Norway’s most recognisable fictional detectives is waning, and the TV series continues to introduce new viewers to this most relatable of characters.

Wisting Series Three is currently airing on BBC Four and BBC iPlayer