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This article contains spoilers for Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole, but not the killer’s identity
In the first episode of Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole, it’s clear that Joel Kinnaman has had no trouble shaking off the nice guy persona he’s been adopting over the last seven years for Apple’s cult sci-fi show For All Mankind. Viewers who only know him as aging astronaut Ed Baldwin are certainly in for a bit of a shock: Kinnaman did not come to play in Netflix’s latest Nordic noir.
The Swedish-American actor has played a detective before, most famously in AMC’s The Killing, but in Detective Hole, he stars as Tom Waaler, a corrupt colleague of the titular character and a real piece of work. Having decided to make his way up the chain of command and do the bidding of mysterious Norwegian power players, Waaler clashes with Hole, a decent sleuth with an alcohol addiction on the verge of quitting the police every eight minutes or so throughout the series.
Hole and Waaler are supposed to be tracking down a serial killer who removes the fingers of his victims and places red pentagram gems on bits of their corpses. The pair reluctantly team up at various moments as they close in on the murderer, even though Hole suspects that Waaler iced his beloved colleague. Waaler is also hiding a grudge of his own against Hole because he was driving drunk during a car chase that got Waaler’s cop boyfriend killed. However, he’s willing to forgive and forget if Hole agrees to let go of his sensibilities and join the dark side. Waaler is nothing if not adaptable.
Over nine glorious, utterly ludicrous episodes, Waaler glides from scene to scene wearing an absolutely flawless fit that usually includes a blue suit jacket and a glinting gold chain. His hair is impeccable, his jawline snatched, his sexuality fluid. As he lifts his gun to annihilate everyone from Hole’s cheery blonde partner to a skeezy local criminal, you can’t help but lean in. Waaler might be a chilling, violent individual, but Kinnaman is having so much fun playing him that you nearly forget he’s not the show’s primary villain. As such, the show’s serial-killer element—surely the part that has attracted most of the viewers who haven’t read the book it’s based on—almost becomes background noise as we follow Waaler through the backstreets of Oslo.
Kinnaman doesn’t hesitate to dial his performance up to an impressive level, consistently blowing every other actor off the screen. During one particular sequence, his dirty detective breezes by a grim public bathroom where he usually meets his gang connection. There, a random young man hanging around catches his eye. Waaler wonders whether he’s overheard any of his dodgy dealings, and is soon engaged in enough flirty conversation with him to establish that he has. Waaler’s demeanor shifts from vulnerable to deadly in a heartbeat, and he follows the trusting man into the bathroom for what the poor lad assumes will be a consensual sexual encounter.
Instead, Waaler waits for him to poke his dick through a glory hole in the stall, slices it off, stabs the man through the face as he collapses, then feeds the severed member to his pet dog. In another scene, Kinnaman strips down to his underwear and grinds hungrily against his own reflection in a floor-length mirror. To say it’s a lot would be an understatement.
Soaking in Waaler’s wild exploits, the juxtaposition of him and the show’s central character remains uniquely hilarious. Waaler is smooth and flawlessly put together in every dangerous situation, while Hole is just a mess. Permanently dripping with sweat, shaved per sometimes, and bleary-eyed, Hole can barely keep up with what’s happening today, let alone the deadly machinations of Waaler and his pawns. Another actor in the role of Waaler might have let Tobias Santelmann be the star of the show as Hole, but Kinnaman’s casting turns out to be a real coup. Waaler’s not the main character, but he might as well be, and you can’t wait to see where he ends up when the final credits roll.
If you haven’t already witnessed his fate with your own eyes, you will not be disappointed.
Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole is now streaming on Netflix.
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