Imagine your next-door neighbours come for dinner one night and they bring their young filipino au pair with them. After dinner the au pair secretly and mysteriously asks you if you can help her, without going into details. You say it’s best to talk to the people looking after her.
The next day she vanishes.
This NETFLIX produced Danish TV drama follows Cecilie, her husband Mike and their au pair called Angel, who does everything around the house. The couple adore her and convince their next-door neighbours Katarina and Rasmus to employ an au pair too.
Her name is Ruby, and she is filipino like Angel, and they are close friends.
One morning Ruby disappears, which leads Cecilie to question Katarina and Rasmus about where Ruby could be. It is then that she becomes suspicious and concerned.
Cecilie investigates deeper into the disappearance of Ruby and slowly suspects that not only her neighbours, but her entire her inner circle could be involved in Ruby’s disappearance.
Her discoveries lead to twists and turns where nobody is what they seem. There are secrets and dark corners in what to the outside world looks like the respectable and desirable face of Danish society.
What I found interesting was that although this drama isn’t based on a true story, it revolves and examines the real-life underbelly of Denmark’s au pair culture. Many of the Scandinavian country’s au pairs are from the Philippines and often seem invisible to mainstream culture. They are often young girls who are far from home and without the protection from relatives, who rely on the income they send home.
Fair to say, they can become easy prey to abuse of all kinds.
The acting in this was brilliant and affecting, you sometimes forgot they were acting at all. The photography was stunning in both the scenery and the interiors which had a moody atmosphere perfect for murder mysteries. The way that they shot the first scene that connected thematically with the last, was clever and coherent. It bookended the narrative so that the events went full circle.
However, given this promising premise, it took so long to get going and felt so slow. You kept on watching thinking it would speed up and you would be hooked, but it never delivered the consistent thrills to make it compelling. Episode after episode passed with not a lot happening, until by episode 6 I found myself fast forwarding to get to some action.
What was dispiriting was that there was obviously so much filler that I could keep track of the storyline with ease.
One positive was that the episodes were around 30 minutes, but really, they could have trimmed it to three to four episodes.
So, what happened to Ruby and who or what was responsible for her disappearance?
The ending was dis-satisfying, leaving some questions to your imagination which I don’t mind, but in this case felt a cynical set up for a second season.
All in all, a missed opportunity to say things about the fragility of Au pair culture, as well as serving up a juicy thriller, come whodunnit.