Not even bad in a good way

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

There is definitely an excellent idea hidden in the background of the film. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find it.

Blistering performances.

Beck offers up understated excellence in the form of a Swedish crime drama. There are several seasons of Beck. I have been fortunate enough to watch two and four, with English subtitles. Unlike many US shows, the Swedish approach to crime drama is modest and down to earth. For me, this approach makes the characters and story, far more accessible and believable. The crime stories Beck and his team investigate are in many ways familiar. This obstacle is overcome by quality narrative and fleshed out characterizations, that really lift this series above the ordinary. A good cast of well known Swedish actors, does this series no harm either. In short Beck is a a worthwhile watch, I can happily recommend. Nine out of ten from me.

the beck series are one of the earlier Swedish-cop-genre movies (yes these are technically movies) i watched each film so far and while some of the earlier movies did have some great stuff, such as dark and gritty atmosphere, suspenseful soundtrack and interesting story lines the second season had lost everything completely, the first season became a big hit and entered mainstream, so when they made the second season it became basically pg-13 family movies, the dark atmosphere was replaced with soap opera sets, the suspense soundtrack was replaced with generic and completely useless piano garbage, the story lines became dull and boring and its obvious they try to shove moral messages down our throats, having a moral message in a movie isn't wrong by any means, but when you force it, it breaks the illusion which is what happened here, but these movies makes money cause some people love bad movies, and Swedish film companies along with Germans finance about 100 000 movies of this kind in Sweden every month, it has gotten so far that no other movie genres exist in Swedish cinema anymore simply cause producers wanna make the same movie over and over again rather than trying something new and fresh, thus these movies have no more artistic value than a toilet roll (except maybe the first 2 or 3) so while i despise these movies i despise Swedish cinema even more, nowadays i only watch independent films from Sweden, i can recommend these movies to people who hate art in general, i recommend anyone who respects art to not support these movies, remember that supporting these movies kills Swedish cinema more and more. if you like these beck movies i highly recommend the works of directors Michael bay, ulli lommel and tommy wiseau, they are better artists than the beck writers/directors could ever dream of becoming

After having exhausted, it seemed, the supply of British mystery/police-procedural series, I turned my attention to foreign (non-English-language) productions. If you are not averse to subtitles, you will find among foreign productions some outstanding series in this genre, and "Beck" is one of them. "Beck" – after "Wallander" and "Van Veeteren" – is the third Swedish-language police- procedural series I have watched, and it may be the best, which is high praise. I should qualify that by saying I have watched only the first 18 episodes of "Beck" (produced from 1997 to 2005), available in the USA as sets 1 through 6. Eight subsequent episodes have been produced and released on DVD, but not yet, as far as I can tell, with Region 1 encoding. "Beck," which aired as a Swedish TV series from 1997 to 2009, is based on the books of Mai Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö in which Inspector Martin Beck, the lead detective of a special homicide team of the Swedish police, was the central character. I gather that the team (in this series) is based in Stockholm, but the crimes they investigate are not limited to that city. Each episode is approximately 90 minutes in length and represents a complete case. I found the stories to be uniformly engrossing, and in several there were twists at the end that I did not see coming. Tying the episodes together is a cadre of well-cast, well-acted characters that appear in all, or nearly all, episodes, and other characters whose tenure spans fewer episodes. Three characters, who appear in all episodes, merit special mention: Beck: level-headed, insightful, possessed of more of an everyman quality than most leading characters (he reminded me of my junior high biology teacher); Gunvald, Beck's right-hand man: brash, swaggering, politically incorrect, tough – the iron fist in Beck's velvet glove; Grannen: Beck's wonderfully eccentric neighbor - he rarely failed to make me laugh. Note: As a result of having read a user review (on another site) that lauded the series but was critical of the quality of the video transfer, especially in light of the fact the reviewer considered the DVD sets to be pricey, I purchased just one set and was attentive to image quality when I watched the first episode. What I found was that the video transfer is not state of the art but neither is it bad. More importantly, it quickly ceased to be an issue as I was pulled into the series. And after I finished the first set, I purchased the remaining five.

To be honest I haven't seen all the Beck movies in the series, which are 21 and counting, but the ones I've seen are well worth watching! I'm from Sweden myself and have a lot of thoughts, most of them negative, regarding Swedish movies. But Beck I like and that's quite an achievement from their part. The Beck series revolves around Martin Beck, Gunvald Larsson and their colleagues at the police force in Stockholm, Sweden. Beck is a divorced, middle-aged man while Larsson is young, forward and a quite violent man (against suspects that is). Together they make a perfect team, investigating crimes committed in Sweden, around Stockholm. The movies have a well written storyline, with diverse crimes, with no fear of showing brutal murders, horrible cases, or to go outside the Swedish border, making this series of movies great! Plot twists are only to be expected at the ending, making sure that everyone is kept in the dark of the outcome until the very end, which isn't always that easy to accomplish. The series of movies are well-known here for a couple of things; Gunvald Larsson's short temper, and his great sarcastic lines! The neighbor of Beck, who always seem to be on sick-leave - wearing a lovely neck-collar, and who always is willing to give Beck some alcohol. And last but not least; the great actors! Peter Haber and Mikael Persbrandt are brilliant in their interpretations of Beck and Larsson.Beck comes well recommended from my part!