There are some thrillers that are built around pretty standard crimes — usually murder. Then there are others where the crime being investigated is even more tragic than the loss of life would indicate. A new Swedish series on Netflix depicts just how one teen got to the point where he felt he had no choice but to shoot his best friend.
DELIVER ME: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Heavy breathing like someone is on the run. We see flashes of two friends when they were young. Then an older version of one of them runs, and we hear a 911 call that says someone is dead.
The Gist: Police detective Farid Ayad (Ardalan Esmaili) is called to the scene where a teen has been shot. His colleague Lana (Beri Gerwise) reluctantly tells him that the victim is Bilal ‘Billy’ Ali (Yasir Hassan), a kid he knows pretty well. Billy is still alive, but barely. Intercut with these scenes is another teen, Douglas ‘Dogge’ Arnfeldt (Olle Strand), running from the scene, ditching the weapon, coming home, washing his clothes, showering, and taking something to numb his feelings.
Farid also knows Dogge, and the first place he goes is Dogge’s house. A zonked-out Dogge answers the door, and one of the first things that Farid says to him is “What the hell have you done?” He won’t say what happened, but the signs are pretty obvious that he was involved.
Dogge and Billy have been best friends since they were in grade school. When Farid briefs Svante Lawson (Kalled Mustonen), the major crimes detective leading the case, he mentions that the two boys have been running errands for a gang led by a guy named Mehdi Bah (Solomon Njie), but Billy got out of the business a few months prior. He thought that Mehdi was too small-time to be able to order one friend to kill the other over something like this.
Farid has been the police contact for Billy’s family as works the program that was going to help him clean up and separate himself completely from the gang. Farid questions what he may have missed, which is when Lana informs him that when she visited Billy’s mother Leila (Yusra Warsama), the teen’s bags were packed to go away for awhile, which Farid wasn’t aware of.
Leila and her three younger kids go to the hospital and they are faced with the fact that Billy is brain dead. The boy’s father arrives and in his grief blames Leila for the state Billy is in, and they argue until Billy’s younger brother Tusse (Mohamed Abdirahman Koje) tells them to stop.
Dogge is brought in to the station for questioning. At first he states that he’s too young to be prosecuted, then seems to have a panic attack when Farid tells him that Billy has died. At a certain point, he tells Farid that Mehdi ordered him to kill his friend because “Billy had to go.” He wants to go home, but they send him to a youth detention center for his safety.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Deliver Me has a bit of a vibe similar to the series Top Boy.
Our Take: Deliver Me, written by Alex Haridi and Amanda Högberg, is definitely a thriller, but it’s also positioned as a cautionary tale about kids who fall through the cracks of society and the legal system. We don’t exactly know the history of Billy and Dogge, just that they’ve been friends since they were little. But we do feel the palpable sadness when we see Dogge holding the gun as he shoots his best friend because the gangster they work for has such a hold over him.
Dogge seems oddly unmoved by the fact that he just killed his best friend, but there seem to be other factors at play, including addiction issues that may be numbing his feelings. He’s more concerned about the fact that Mehdi is to blame than the fact that he just killed Billy. What we hope to see more of is the origins of their friendship, how they started working for Mehdi, and just how things got to the point where Billy wanted to get out and Mehdi found there was no choice but to have Dogge kill him.
The other factor in this story is Farid. What brought these teens to his attention and just what kind of effort did he make to help them both? We see a scene where Billy talks to Farid about a recent drug test, so we know that Farid was heavily involved. But what did he miss? What wasn’t Billy or Dogge telling him? The more of this background that gets filled in, the more powerful the thriller aspect of this story will be.
Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.
Parting Shot: As Dogge is brought into the youth detention center, someone already has his eyes on the teen.
Sleeper Star: Yusra Warsama, who plays Billy’s mother Leila, effectively shows the grief and anger she has to deal with, not only over her son’s death but over the fact that his father is blaming her despite the fact that she’s sacrificed everything to raise Billy and his siblings.
Most Pilot-y Line: None we could find.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Deliver Me is a heartbreaking story about two teens who fell through the cracks of the system with tragic results, but because of that heartbreak, it’s also an effective thriller.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
