If Nordic noir has taught us anything, it’s that being a detective and having a happy home life don’t mix. The first series of Juliet made this harsh fact very clear; in a genre where returning home only to be confronted by a past that won’t stay dead isn’t exactly unusual, it’s a series that stood out by finding new ways to put its heroine on a knife edge.
After returning to the scenic but sombre seaside town of De Haan to handle her deceased father’s estate, detective Juliet Dumon (Charlotte De Bruyne) was forced to deal with both her own repressed past and her troubled 14-year-old niece, Chloe (Amber Naert). A lifetime of running away from her problems finally caught up to her; turning her mystery-solving skills back onto her own life turned out to be harder than she thought.
While she sorted a few things out by the end of the first season, the start of season two still comes as a bit of a shock. It’s been two years since we last saw Juliet, and things in the world of Juliet have changed just a little. For starters, De Haan is looking a little sunnier than before – and it doesn’t take long to realise this sunny outlook extends to Juliet herself.
Freed from the haunting visions of drowning that previously dominated her life, Juliet now has a new obsession: she’s in love. Local lawyer Sam Deckers (Jonas Vermeulen) has captured her heart, and it seems like everything’s coming up roses. After all, there’s no way a police detective and a lawyer would ever find anything to fight over, is there?
Fans of the first season might be forgiven for wondering how long Juliet’s newly upbeat take on the world is going to last. Sure, it’s nice that she’s found happiness, but this is Juliet we’re watching: families are meant to be something we struggle with.
Enter Chloe. In yet another twist, at first everything seems to be working out there as well - at least as far as Juliet is concerned. Her lack of parenting skills, combined with her new love obsession, mean she’s not picking up on the clues her teenage niece is leaving. Chloe has a secret that she can’t tell her aunt, and the longer she stays silent the worse it’s going to get.
To be fair to Juliet, she does have an excuse for her neglect that isn’t related to her new beau. An elderly woman has been found dead, and while the police figure it to be a suicide, Juliet isn’t so sure. Her hunch that the woman wouldn’t have left her television on if she’d been planning to die might seem a little shaky, but it doesn’t take long for the facts to back her up – it was murder, and it won’t be the last.
Storm clouds are gathering on the work front as well. She’s been working alongside Jamal (Nabil Mallat) since she returned to De Haan, and right from the start they’ve made for a strong team. She’s the quiet, determined type, intensely focused on getting results; he’s the friendly local everyone knows, a chatty guy who people want to open up to.
Now the cracks are beginning to show. Jamal is starting to ask questions about the blunt (to say the least) way she deals with suspects – after all, these are their neighbours, and they don’t just vanish once she kicks them out the door. On her part, she’s increasingly unimpressed with his soft approach to people who may very well be killers or worse. It’s a conflict that isn’t going away – but if they can’t figure out a way to defuse it, one of them just might be.
If there’s a common factor in all the problems that slowly build up around Juliet across the course of the series, it’s Juliet herself. She’s always had an edge to her, but in the first season the finger could be pointed at her troubled past. Now she’s discovering that just because she’s resolved her past trauma, that doesn’t mean her present-day problems simply vanish – and with a series of crimes to solve, it’s not like she has the time to do serious work on herself.
Juliet is still a mystery series, with all the twists and shady characters and shock reveals that make them so gripping to watch. And with each mystery running over two episodes, there’s plenty of room for surprises (when there’s one murder there’s usually more to come in De Haan). But Juliet never wanted to be a mother, let alone take care of a troubled teen. Love was never part of the plan either. And now, the plan that life’s imposed on her seems to be spiralling out of her control.
It’s lucky she’s so good at solving mysteries.
Juliet seasons 1-2 are now streaming at SBS On Demand.
