The Chestnut Man: Hide and Seek

Netflix

While it may not have made Netflix’s top 10 list yet, a show has returned after a five-year hiatus, and it was previously tied as the best-reviewed crime series on the service. Well, you can’t really go higher than a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score, can you?

The show is The Chestnut Man, the 2021 series based on Danish novelist Søren Sveistrup, who previously created The Killing. That arrived with a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score back then and a solid 84% from audiences. Now it has returned in the form of The Chestnut Man: Hide and Seek, a new book in the series released on March 26. Clearly, the show had been in the works for a while before that.

The Chestnut Man: Hide and Seek is live today, and while it doesn’t have enough reviews in yet for a verified Rotten Tomatoes score, the ones that are published are stellar. It’s a thumbs up from RogerEbert.com, a 5/5 from Heaven of Horror and a 9/10 from Screenrant. So a 100% currently seems possible, if not likely, as more reviews roll in for this. Though I do think it’s getting a bit steamrolled right now, with perhaps not enough Netflix promotion to get it onto the charts. Foreign Netflix crime series often do very well, so it seems like this series, a follow-up to a fantastic original, should be a priority to push. We’ll see if that happens over this weekend. Here’s the synopsis to Hide and Seek:

"Thirty years later, a woman is haunted by a string of anonymous text messages, repeating that same counting rhyme. Counting down. Found you. Detectives Naia Thulin and Mark Hess are charged with finding the missing woman. But when they uncover links to a decades-old cold case, their investigation takes a terrifying turn. A twisted killer is on the loose. Can they catch them, before they strike again?

I previously wrote that there are a number of foreign crime series that also have 100% Rotten Tomatoes scores, among them Germany’s Dear Child, Spain’s The Innocent, and Spain’s The Snow Girl. But The Chestnut Man is one of only a handful of ones that have returned for more seasons, more akin to the likes of Broadchurch or Happy Valley. And those are certainly great comparisons as some of the best in the genre.

Season 2 is a traditionally rather short six episodes, as is season 1, which you may want to start with, given that it’s easily possible that you did not watch the original when it aired five years ago. Check it out, and then this new season after that.

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