Detective Hole review: A thriller with characters and plot twists that had me firmly gripped

Every character is allowed to breathe. They could all support their own spin-off series.

Tobias Santelmann as Detective Hole

Whoever called it  Detective Hole (Netflix) has never been to Ireland. It’s hard not to look at the title and go ‘Detective Me-Hole’. But that would be our loss, because this Scandi-noir thriller from the pen of Jo Nesbo is a cracker.

It has the feel of Cracker, the 1990s crime procedural with Robbie Coltrane. Harry Hole (pronounced Who-La, so get over yourself) is a flawed detective straight out of the recipe book. Off the drink, can’t keep a girlfriend, blaming himself for the death of a partner during a car chase in a five-year-old case. But this works because the acting is on human scale, while the plot keeps upping the stakes.