# The Unlikely Murderer (2021)

> A Swedish miniseries dramatizing how a real suspect in the 1986 assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme slipped through the fingers of a bumbling police investigation.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/109317

## Facts

- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 5
- Episode runtime: 47 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: crime, drama
- Created by: Thomas Pettersson, Wilhelm Behrman, Niklas Rockström
- Network: Netflix
- Cast: Robert Gustafsson, Mikael Persbrandt, Eva Melander, Björn Bengtsson, Peter Viitanen, Cilla Thorell, Joel Spira, Magnus Krepper
- TMDB rating: 7.0/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13735930/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: moderate
- Complexity: layered
- Violence: mild
- Tone: tense, wry, grounded, melancholic

## What critics say

Audiences rate the miniseries as a well-crafted, mixed-to-positive dramatization of the Palme assassination investigation and the elusive suspect at its center.

## Synopsis

The Unlikely Murderer (2021) is a Swedish true crime drama miniseries created by Thomas Pettersson, Wilhelm Behrman and Niklas Rockström and released on Netflix. Across five roughly forty-seven-minute episodes it dramatizes the aftermath of the 1986 assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme, following the elusive figure Stig Engström, played by Robert Gustafsson, a man who manages to evade justice until his death through audacity, luck and a flailing police force. Mikael Persbrandt plays investigator Hans Holmér, and Eva Melander appears as Margareta Engström, anchoring the domestic side of the drama alongside the official machinery pursuing the case. The engine of the series is the gap between a nervous, improvising suspect and a bureaucracy that keeps stumbling over its own leads, so each episode is built from interviews, dead ends, and public pressure. Set in 1980s Stockholm, the story carries a cool, tense, sometimes wry register, with a Nordic noir sensibility in its patient, grim atmosphere. Fans of The Staircase, The Bridge and Chernobyl will find resonance in its grounded retelling of a real case that refused to close, and the miniseries leaves its central question unsettled while remaining true to the historical record.

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