Viewers accustomed to binge-watching will probably be surprised that “Profilerka” will be keeping us company for the next twelve weeks (the premiere is scheduled for Saturdays on TVP1 at 8:20 p.m.), so it promises to be a criminal autumn. . After two episodes, which public television made available in advance to journalists, the series intrigues and encourages people to watch it again.
Criminal autumn on TVP
Crime series are TVP’s specialty. This was the case in the 1970s and 1980s, when Lieutenant Borewicz was popular in the hit “07 Zgpowiedz się”, in the 1990s when we watched “Ekstradycja” and a decade later during the broadcast of “Cop” and “Officer”. It is true that productions such as “Padre Mateusz” have meant that we no longer associate TVP with crime fiction as a genre that shows contemporary social problems of Poles against the backdrop of crime, but “Krucjata” is returning for a second season and the premiere of “Profilerka” could change that impression.
The series begins with a typical image of a “quiet and cheerful village”. In the countryside near Augustów in June, life flows lazily, the postman rides his bike after finishing work, thinking that he will soon go looking for spirits in his roadside hideout. However, he hears a scream and soon sees a dead woman lying on the forest path. That is all that remains of the idyllic atmosphere. The local police officers spring into action, not necessarily enthusiastic about the idea of conducting an investigation instead of fishing.
Crime in Augustów
The advantage of “Profilerka” is its familiarity, which is not rude and familiar. We have a local police station where officers usually deal with smuggling of goods and domestic violence, and suddenly they have to solve the case of the murder of a family of four. Karol Nadzieja (played by Michał Czernecki) is a police officer who gives the impression of being partly a local and partly an outsider. You can tell that he knows the specifics of the area, but he is a little less “local” than his colleagues. He invites the famous profiler Julia Wiger (Wiktoria Gorodeckaja) to cooperate.
Both Karol and Julia lose themselves in their work and cannot manage their private lives. They are each raising a child, although sometimes the children seem more emotionally mature than their parents. The detective and the profiler have a past in common, something clearly happened between them that hangs over their current professional relationship.
Stars of the TVP series “Profilerka”.
Wiktoria Gorodeckaja gives an interesting performance as a profiler who is so focused on her work that she even wins the “worst mother of the year” award. After the first two episodes, it is easy to guess that her relationship with both her father and her own son is not the best. The heroine is not good at communicating with her immediate family, but when she deals with a new case, she immediately catches the wind in her sails. Gorodeckaja does a great job in the role of a withdrawn, distant and isolated professional. We would say that Julia Wiger’s character resembles a woman on the autism spectrum, which would explain many of her atypical behaviors (such as obsessive focus on the case, withdrawal from social relationships, isolation from the outside world).
In “Profilerka” we see Michał Czernecki in a dramatic role, which is a nice change after the actor’s comedic performances (last year, Czernecki appeared, among others, in “Camera Cafe” and “Algorithm of Love”, and even earlier in “Emigration XD”). He works very well as a thoroughbred cop. He’s not over the top, not too hypocritical or cynical, just straight to the point.
Far from the big cities
The series fits into the popular trend of telling crime stories outside of big cities. We already had “The Raven”, in which the main character operated in the vicinity of Białystok, and now the pair of investigators are searching for the perpetrator of a quadruple homicide in Augustów.
In addition to the detective and the profiler, we also follow the actions of a young prosecutor (played by Aleksandra Pisul), a character with great potential to cause trouble. Interestingly, it is clear that this is a modern production, where the presence of women in previously masculine places is not surprising, even if not everyone cooperates harmoniously.
“Profilerka” is a proposal for fans of pure crime stories, something that has been missing from the programming of Public Television in recent years. The first two episodes do not reveal many facts about the world presented, but they promise a complex investigation and a meticulous search for many pieces of the puzzle. On the positive side, it is worth highlighting an interesting cast, a good initial idea of the plot and a location with great potential to develop themes both moral and related to crime. Finally, I must mention that the series has sound problems and some dialogues (especially its jokes) are completely incomprehensible even after being played several times.
“Profiler” premieres on TVP1’s schedule on September 7th and airs on Saturdays at 20/20. The whole thing has twelve episodes.
