Snowy Scandi-Noir-Style Suspense... by way of French Canada (The Wall TV series review)

Snow… a wall of white, as far as the eye can see. A small mining colony at the very top of the world (far northeastern Quebec, so near enough the “top”, at any rate)—the imposing end of which is built to look like nothing so much as one massive, continuous wall (though whether to keep those northern winds and more snow out, or to keep its inhabitants within, would be hard to say). All the usual gossip, grievances, and carrying on between those who live there (willingly or not, as the case may be) year-round, and the “fly-in-fly-outs” who stay for couple-month work stints, then return to wherever it is from which they came, are on full display. 

Oh, and a murder… something which never happens in a town that can’t even boast of having any elderly people within its walls (so also, virtually no deaths).

Thus begins La Faille, or—as you may have already sussed—The Wall, in English.

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When her boss tells her she’s headed to the middle of nowhere to take over a fresh murder case, there’s little that seasoned Detective Sergeant Céline Trudeau (Isabel Richer) can do but pack a bag and climb aboard the small puddle jumper ready to whisk her away from Quebec City to the distant north. 

As soon as the plane touches down in tiny Fermont, Céline—in her big-city, no-nonsense way—immediately takes charge, informing younger Detective Alex Théberge (Alexandre Landry), the (practically) still-wet-behind-the-ears cop who meets her at the airstrip, that he’ll be her right-hand man for the duration.

The murder, when she arrives at the scene, is as odd as Céline has been told: the body of a young woman—a part-time dancer at the inevitable bar-cum-strip-joint (which has been a prominent feature in every mining towns since always)—was found stuffed into a heating duct in the main complex… with a Chinese mask epoxied to her face.

Why would anyone kill this seemingly-harmless party girl? A case of jealousy, a lovers’ tiff? Some drug connection? And what is the significance of the mask (in a place that has no Asian presence or affiliations, to speak of)? Céline wants answers, but, after being informed that Fermont has no coroner—no one really dies there, remember—is forced to request the services of an old friend, a pathologist from the city (who, unsurprisingly, is no more thrilled than she was at being flown to the bitterly-cold, ass-end of nowhere). 

Once she gets the pathologist’s initial findings, including cause of death (carbon monoxide poisoning)—and after spurring the handful of inexperienced local cops at her disposal into doing some digging—one thing stands out to Céline: this murder bears striking resemblance to an as-yet-unexplained death from a few years ago… that of a little boy from a troubled home, who’d also been found asphyxiated, in curious circumstances.

But, could the dead boy’s sometimes-violent father—a main suspect, at the time—be somehow responsible for not only his child’s tragic demise, but also that of someone very different, years later? 

Or, is the real truth that something even darker is happening within the claustrophobic confines of this snowy fortress… and that, with no way out, the death count will continue to rise?

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There’s a lot more going on in The Wall than that, of course; the series is nicely fleshed-out, with regard to the “townies” (and all the relationships amongst them), the outsiders, and the intrepid Céline. 

For me, there are really two main characters of note in The Wall: Fermont, the tiny, secluded community (which just begs for all sorts of buried secrets and weirdness, as anyone who’s ever spent any time in a small town can attest), and Céline, herself. She’s damaged—yes, in that way that pretty much every cop/detective, ever, must be damaged (if you wanna look at things from a rather jaded perspective)—and a law unto herself, totally unapologetic about her behavior (which, no, I won’t detail for you; better you watch the show and see how things unfold within the parameters of the story). It’s refreshing to watch a mature female character capable of both commanding incisiveness and a casual sort of carelessness with the feelings of others.

From the characters to the suspenseful build-ups to the pervading sense of something evil waiting just beyond the nearly-impenetrable blockade of snow, The Wall kept me riveted… so much so that I’ll be on the lookout for the second season’s arrival. 

~GlamKitty