*Insert tense and slightly creepy jazz music*
Roland Hassel is a Swedish crime-thriller from The '80s, based on a series of novels by author Olov Svedelid, and with actor Lars-Erik Berenett as the titular protagonist Roland Hassel, a genius cop who uses his intelligence rather than fighting skills to accomplish his goals and finish the cases. It had three seasons in its original run, with each episode featuring a case and a hidden villain, usually revealed in the middle of the episode or at the very end, where a major plot twist happens.
A remake was made in 2017-2018. Ola Rapace, the new actor, said he found the originals "boring", but that he liked the character Hassel in general.
This work provides examples of:
- Action Girl: There Is No Mercy has Galina, a russian cop who is out to arrest Johnny Strand and eventually kill him.
- Affably Evil: The villain from "Safe Papers" is an elderly corrupt businessman, but he genuinely cares for his daughter and wants to her to continue his legacy as a businessman.
- Alas, Poor Villain: It is revealed at the end of There Is No Mercy! that Gallina is planning on killing multiple people as vigilante justice, putting her firmly in Anti-Villain territory, but her death is heartbreaking as she instead kills Johnny Strand, the Big Bad who killed her family rather than arrest him, and she dies here. She smiles as she dies, and everyone seems sad over her death.
- Asshole Victim: On the other side of the coin, Strand's death is well-deserved and while many might feel sympathy for the above-mentioned villain's death, no one will feel the same about this sociopath.
- Big Bad: While the individual episodes have a Monster of the Week for every episode, the 2000 film There Is No Mercy! has Johnny Strand, a vicious mob boss who killed the second protagonist's family.
- Distant Finale: An odd example in Hassel: The Private Investigators, a 2012 Genre Deconstruction movie starring Lars-Erik Berenett as an aging Roland Hassel, but also including several real-life conspiracy theorists As Themselves, all trying to solve the 1985 murder of Prime Minister Olof Palme.
- Monster of the Week: Well duh.
- Nice Guy: Simon Palm, especially in the original, is like the human equivalent of Winnie the Poo, he's kind and goodhearted all the time, eats alot and is quite chubby, and loves children (Palm has multiple of his own in fact).
- There's also Hassel's wife Virena who is always seen as cheerful and happy.
- Hassel's children are probably the nicest persons in the entire series, being cute all the time.
- Ms. Fanservice: Briefly, but Hassel's wife Virena is very good-looking anyway.
- The Sociopath:
- "The Blackmailers" has Jeff Dureya, a former FBI Agent kicked for slowly obtaining more and more mob connections, who became an assassin later and has no qualms blowing up an entire plane just so that he can kill one victim. He's a Cold Sniper as well, often toying with his victims.
- The two villains in "Penitens" are both emotionless sadists who seem to do what they do for fun.
- In There Is No Mercy!, there's the Big Bad Johnny Strand, who kills his own men, killed Galina Kalinova's family, tries bombing an entire church, etc, all for money, and simply doesn't seem to like humans in general.
