Sometimes it’s a risk to watch a show that features a topic you know a lot about. You might find yourself nodding along but you also can be quickly shouting at the screen “that would never happen”. Police procedurals sometimes commit the crime of saying things like “we checked the 1991 census and here are the suspects”. This review features some spoilers for the series, but it is a real story and you’ve probably already heard the hook.
When it came to Netflix’s The Breakthrough, a Swedish language 4 part drama on the first use of genetic genealogy to solve a crime there, I had heard some good things, so I put it on last night. And I watched the whole thing in one go. The story is a fictionalised version of a true case: a senseless broad daylight double murder of a child and a woman who intervened in Linköping, Sweden in 2004. The names of the victims and investigators have been changed.
The first episode deals with the crime and immediate aftermath and follows a standard police story that we’re all familiar with. There’s also a terrible wig on the main police detective and I realised later they were aging him down because the second episode features a big time jump.
Episode 3 sees the now older detective approached by his boss, Swedish Colin Farrell, to say they have to give up on the case for budget reasons – it’s been 16 years and they’re nowhere. But fortuitously, our plucky detective hears the news about the Golden State Killer being caught on the radio and decides they should give it a shot.
He approaches a genealogist, who we first see in a scene delivering the news of who someone’s father is in a way that is played for laughs and would never happen in real life. He looks like a Swedish Chris Pine. As a genetic genealogist, he has a touch of Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes going around muttering the names of parishes and questioning things, generally being incomprehensible.
Swedish Chris Pine is cocky and says he’ll be able to solve this unsolvable crime with his method. We see him looking at computer screens, wearing white gloves and pouring over old registers, while forgetting to eat. He also forces everyone in the show to take DNA tests without any discussions of the ramifications (not realistic now!) The budget for Post-its on this show must have been immense. There’s a lot of maps with drawing pins. There’s a theme of people ignoring their families to do their jobs to the max ability which might be realistic for police but I don’t think it is for genealogists!
The policeman finds it hard to relinquish control to Swedish Chris Pine but he has to do it! Swedish Colin Farrell puts a spanner in the works with the news that this method might contravene GDPR and there’s some jiggery pokery to avoid being shutdown. But they get there in the end. Of course, everything is massively fast by comparison to a real life genetic genealogy case.
Despite knowing the broad outcome, I found the show compelling, and a fairly realistic depiction of how doing genetic genealogy works, although I don’t personally use Post-Its and maps on a drawing board. The story is victim and investigator-centred and gives very little time to the perpetrator, which feels right. It’s well-acted and some scenes were especially poignant. It’s a fun easy watch to binge over a weekend. Definitely give it a go if you enjoy true crime and genealogy! Afterwards, you can read up on the real story.