"they run like animals from the sauna to the sea": ROBA is the hit finnish police procedural

actually i don't know if it's a hit, but i just found it on netflix uk and it's in its third series

it's more like the bill than the bridge, but that is no bad thing

i don't know what ROBA means -- when i put it into FINNISH-ENGLISH it just came back as ROBA

• the station head is a hapless recently appointed clown who broods on the bad hand he's been played (he's also gay but closeted)
• there is a portly cynical grizzled veteran who plays everything close to the line, who is teaching his tall bald partner to do the same (all their encounters are a read-the-situation conundrum plus a moral dilemma)
• the central character is a youngish separated policewoman w/a truculent nine-yr-old son and a youngish somewhat alcoholic (police) partner who gets bends the rules and gets into fights and is something of a glib dick, but obviously fond of the policewoman, and protective etc

Yes yes but what character does Tuomas play?

And which ones commit Ufoporno?

no one *remotely* like tuomas has featured so far -- possibly bcz he is not (a) a policeperson or (b) a scuzzy low-rent crim

the glib dick and the mom w/nine-yr-old just kissed at a v drunken karaoke-sauna party (and then the other cops started a fight with a neighbour complaining abt the noise) (lol the hapless station-chief clown has ended up in a cell for being drunk and disorderly and hitting a policeman)

it is also not like a bit like tove jannson

(except actually this last ep *was* a bit like moominsummer madness)

https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roba

Series title refers to the Helsinki small Roobertinkatu or "Roba" the location of the police station, which was closed in 2012.

so basically "hill street"

thread of the year

something like hill street makes sense, it's very much abt the feel of a specific city quarter

makes me wonder if finland ever had a policier before tho, almost every episode some cop or other seems to be wondering out loud "b-but what if the only way to do something GOOD is to do something BAD?"

this (and Äkta Människor which Tracer kept raving about on the WestWorld thread) are NOT AVAILABLE on American Netflix yet) so pffthbbt

just starting series two

just to summarise what i lked abt series 1: that with a couple of exceptions the police work being done was unglamorous unthreatening dreary peacekeeping -- teenagers being cocks, drunks and druggies, minor theft, domestics (far more unscientific fists than guns) -- and as a consequence we're watching finnplod to see how they cope with this quotidian war on inner youthful idealism, as "frontline" against unending petty crappy stuff… the ones who become cynical reactionaries, the ones who start to bend rules towards open petty corruption blah blah, the ones who can't unwind their own overcomplicated and compromised lives from what they're allowed to do and what not…

the bill's early shtick -- back when it was just a half hour show -- was to take two stories an episode, one for "upstairs" (the detectives) and one for "downstairs' (the streetbeat) and offset them… the downstairs one was often relatively comical (they had a tranche of cops who functioned as shakespearean mechanicals, a comedy mirror of the serious stuff) (i think the lit scholar TERENCE HAWKES controversially made the argt that dramatic students wd do better to study the bill than shakespeare)

ROBA isn't really doing this -- the comedy character is if anything the station chief -- and the narrative is the learning curve of various characters (mostly the five noted above: the young man, her glib-dick cop-car partner, the grizzled stocky seen-it-all veteran, his tall young balld very idealistic cop-car partner, and the station chief (whose drunken fight with cops from another station -- also noted above -- is what persuaded HIS superior that he was possibly a decent copper after all)

anyway series two looks (a) better budgeted, with lots of classic nordnoir establishing shots of whole swathes of the city, plus (b) a bit more melodramatically imperilled (more guns in the first ep than the whole of the last series

lol at the entire force creeping into work totally hung over

minor element in nordnoirs that i'm mindly fascinated by: when they codeshift into englishto make a point (or a joke)

my favourite from last series was someone saying "wakey wakey eggs and bakey" -- which isn't even an english phrase

(i know finns aren't nords)

While it is not known where the line "Wakey, Wakey, Eggs and Bakey" originated the first popular use was in Jury Duty (1995) starring Pauly Shore and is quoted by Shelley Winters when she wakes up her son to hand him his jury notice summons.
Procella · 2 years ago

lol ok

is this really an MTV finland production

their promo material makes it look like a comedy yes, like a u.s. basic cable cop dramedy

there's a low-key thread of comedy but one of the themes it's returning to is ppl not really dealing with serious shock or trauma (except by drinking and desultory shagging) -- there hasn't been a lot of cop-death or serious injury but there hasn't been none

one of the many things i like about it is that the crims -- even the murderous ones -- are almost all total idiots

the boss's boss looks incredibly like david davis

the boss's boss who looks incredibly like david davis possibly knocks his wife around

is there a name for that (very white) upbeat instrumental reggae which is a lot more harmonically cute than, well, actual real reggae

hongroots reggae

jani has turned in this series from a glib dick to a faintly astounding and unpredictable comic character (about a quarter of the role is the character clowning, but in a way where you aren;t quite certain if he's being deliberately funny, or funny by mistake) (the actor on the other hand knows what he's doing) (actor = aku hirviniemi)

none of cops can ever quite run fast enough to catch anyone

"i know my rights!"
"this is finland not the united states, those aren't your rights"

Lol OK I am going to go on in this

how has tuomas not posted in this thread yet, srsly

no one *remotely* like tuomas has featured so far

wondering if this is still entirely true actually

man in tin-foil hat klaxon

^^^my favourite sub-genre in a procedural

and done (just three series i think)

Wow, I had no idea that this is on Netflix! I don't watch non-internet television, and I'm not particularly interested in cop shows, so I've never watched Roba... Maybe I should try it.

is this really an MTV finland production

In here we have television company called MTV that's way older than Music Television (it was founded in 1957). It's short for "Mainostelevisio", which literally means "commercial television", as opposed to YLE, our own BBC, which doesn't have commercials.

something like hill street makes sense, it's very much abt the feel of a specific city quarter

I haven't watched the series so I don't know how they portray it, but Roba (the street and the police station named after it) are in southernmost Helsinki, which is a very posh and affluent area. If they'd wanted to do a gritty, Hill Street Blues style series, they should've set it at (for example) the police station in Malmi, in northern Helsinki, which is where I grew up. That's a way poorer area with different kind of crime than Punavuori, where Roba is.

one of the many things i like about it is that the crims -- even the murderous ones -- are almost all total idiots

This is actually quite true with criminals in here. The stereotypical Finnish murder involves some boozing buddies getting really drunk, having an argument, and one of them killing another in a drunken haze. There is some local organised crime but not much, and it mostly works in drug smuggling and sales. Almost all the well-organised robberies (like bank and jewelry store jobs where thy got away with substantial loot) in recent years have turned out to be done by criminals from other EU countries or Russia. Most of the local ones simply aren't smart and organised enough to do anything like that.

Oh yeah, and there haven't really been that many successful police procedurals in the local television here. Most of the truly popula cop series have been comedies, I think Roba is only the first or second police drama to have made it past two seasons. Though it's worth mentioning that pretty much all the main actors in it are better known as comedians.

Lol, looks like the isn't available on our Netflix, probably because MTV wants to keep the local distribution rights to itself. I guess I won't watch it then.

That scene where the crim's asking spiky hair about ketchup and mayonnaise really stayed with me. Really really creepy

the new hit finnish procedural i am watching is called BORDERTOWN in English (or SORJONEN in Finnish), set in Lappeenranta, on the Finno-Russian border.

Sorjonen is the central character, an investigator perhaps intended to be considered somewhat aspergers -- certainly his co-cops think him weird and irritating. There is also a Russian FSB agent called Lena, who helps him unoffiically (mainly by shooting people).

first three-parter wz abt the underage sex trade, second is abt drugs

and it's more like the bridge than the bill