I usually have a soft spot for Scandinavian thrillers. Oftentimes, they're so unique and interesting that Hollywood ends up remaking them -- like The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2009) or The Hunt (2012). There's a kind of slow-burning tension and cold realism to them that you don't always get in American shows. However, while that's usually the case, I have to say that The Glass Dome, the new six-episode Netflix series, doesn't quite measure up -- even though it has potential.
Created by Swedish best-selling crime author Camilla Läckberg, The Glass Dome takes us to a remote Swedish village. Lejla Ness (played by Léonie Vincent) returns to her childhood home after years away. It's a town caught between tradition and modernisation and that tension bubbles under the surface from the very beginning. For Lejla, though, the real tension comes from something much darker -- her own past. Years ago, as a child, she was kidnapped and held in a glass box by an unknown perpetrator. Now, after her return, another young girl disappears and the mystery surrounding that disappearance begins to pull Lejla back into the trauma she never truly escaped. The question looms: is this a coincidence or is someone trying to recreate the horrors of her past?
One thing that I do like about The Glass Dome is what I always like about Scandinavian dramas and thrillers: the setting. There's just something about the isolated, snowy towns with under-equipped police departments that sets the mood perfectly. That atmosphere of stillness and dread lingers in every frame and it gives off the kind of suspenseful, eerie vibe that might remind you of Fargo (1996) or even the recent True Detective: Night Country (2024). That classic "there's nowhere to run" feeling adds a lot to the tension.
The core story revolves around Lejla. After escaping her abductor as a child, she was raised by the town's former police chief and his wife. Her return home for a funeral is quickly overshadowed when another girl is kidnapped and Lejla is forced to face her deeply buried trauma. This triggers a painful investigation, both externally in the case and internally within herself. The show doesn't shy away from disturbing themes -- child abduction, self-harm and trauma. It's emotionally heavy and for the most part, that weight feels earned.
What The Glass Dome tries to do is blend the criminal investigation with psychological introspection. That's not a bad idea on paper. I actually like when thrillers give you damaged characters who aren't just tools for the plot, but people carrying real baggage. The show emphasises mental health, trauma and emotional scars without spoon-feeding commentary. We're shown how those experiences affect people long-term and it helps make some of the suspects feel genuinely shady -- you're never quite sure what anyone is hiding.
That said, I do think The Glass Dome stumbles in execution. It tries to be a heavy character study, but in doing so, it sometimes forgets it's also supposed to be suspenseful. At times, it's just plain slow. There's not a lot of action and a good chunk of the runtime is spent in hazy dream sequences or psychological flashbacks. We watch Lejla relive her trauma, but the imagery is abstract and not always clear. Sometimes the audience is left to piece together meaning without enough context and while that can be a cool approach, here it feels more confusing than compelling. Instead of guiding us through a mystery, the show sort of expects us to do the work -- whether that's good or bad depends on how much patience you bring to it.
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The acting, honestly, is not much to brag about. Léonie Vincent does an okay job playing a haunted and guarded woman dealing with emotional trauma. She's believable enough, but she doesn't quite elevate the material. Her portrayal feels more like a passive observer than a driving force. There's nothing particularly empowering about her character and when we get to her big "aha" moment, it doesn't even feel earned.
The show does attempt to keep things interesting by creating strange and tense relationships between its characters. For example, there's the dynamic between Valter Ness (Johan Hedenberg), the retired police commissioner who took Lejla in and Tomas (Johan Rheborg), who took over after Valter stepped down. Then there's a conflict between the owners of a local mining company and a group of environmental activists, which adds more suspects to the mix. This part actually works well, making it hard to tell who's trustworthy. Unfortunately, some of these plot threads are left hanging. The show introduces ideas -- some even blatantly obvious -- only to leave them completely unaddressed later. Tangents come and go with little payoff.
I'm not a fan of plot points just dangling in the air. I get that not everything has to be wrapped up neatly, but some of these arcs feel abandoned and it makes the story feel incomplete. Still, the urgency in the final stretch picks up again as the search for the missing girl intensifies. The final reveal is twisted and unsettling, which is fitting. But the motive behind it? Thin at best. It's underdeveloped, which leaves you more puzzled than satisfied. I don't mind mysteries that make me work to solve them but if there's going to be a motive, it needs to be clearly conveyed. Otherwise, the lack of clarity feels like a flaw, not a feature.
In the end, several aspects of The Glass Dome go unexamined. Characters sometimes behave in ways that contradict what we've seen before. The show is good at misdirection and the twists are effective, but the conclusion left me feeling unsatisfied. You know how sometimes you finish a movie and think: "This could've worked better as a TV show?" Well, The Glass Dome is the opposite. It probably would have worked better as a two-hour film. So much of the first five episodes feels like it's meandering, just buying time until the finale. That said, while the limited series isn't perfect, it still gives you a solid half-day binge with a few chilling moments and mild entertainment.
The Glass Dome
Starring Léonie Vincent, Johan Hedenberg, Johan Rheborg
Directed by Lisa Farzaneh
Now streaming on Netflix
