# Wasteland (2016)

> A village mayor's search for her missing daughter exposes the buried secrets of a community torn apart by a coal company's buyout offer.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/60047

## Facts

- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 8
- Episode runtime: 55 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: drama, mystery
- Created by: Jan Bílek
- Network: HBO Europe
- Cast: Zuzana Stivínová, Jaroslav Dušek, Eliška Křenková, Jan Cina, Karel Zima, Anita Krausová, Oskar Hes, Štěpán Benoni
- TMDB rating: 7.9/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5459168/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: strong
- Complexity: layered
- Violence: mild
- Tone: bleak, brooding, paranoid, melancholic, tense

## What critics say

Praised as a bleak, atmospheric small-town mystery with strong performances, though its slow build divides viewers.

## Synopsis

Wasteland is a Czech mystery drama miniseries created by Jan Bílek for HBO Europe. Mayor Hana Sikorová stands up to a coal mining company that offers villagers generous payouts to abandon their homes above brown coal deposits in a northern Bohemian village. Then her fourteen year old daughter Misha vanishes. Hana's search turns her suspicious of neighbors she has lived beside peacefully for years, and her husband Karel and daughter Klára are pulled into the unraveling. Police officer Lukáš Vačířek works the case as the village's quiet decency gives way to fear and resentment. Told across a single run of episodes, the story moves through several intertwined threads of different residents that gradually connect in unexpected ways. The atmosphere is bleak and unsettling, with rain-soaked provincial dread and a sense of moral decay under economic pressure. Its emotional weight comes from the slow erosion of trust between people who once looked after one another. Fans of Twin Peaks, The Killing and Broadchurch will find resonance in its small community mystery and slow-burning unease.

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