— The following contains spoilers for seasons one and two. If you haven't watched already, they are streaming now at SBS On Demand, along with season 3 —
Bea Farkas (Julia Ragnarsson), economic journalist for newspaper The Daily Post, first landed on our screens in the debut series of Swedish financial thriller Blinded in 2019. The intrepid young investigator was hungry for headlines, and her enquiries into a too-good-to-be-true bank story introduced her to the suave bank director Peder Rooth (Matias Varela).
Despite her many misgivings, Farkas fell in love with Rooth, stirring up a wasp's nest of corruption, fraud, and questionable journalistic ethics. Season two (spoiler alert!) returned to their troubled romance, as the duo shifted between Malta and Stockholm in a hopeless dance to the backdrop of Farkas's story on a troubled credit company in cahoots with a casino. In the second and third seasons, a new set of writers led by Jens Jonsson (End of Summer, Life Deluxe) took greater creative license with the source material that had largely dictated the first season: Caroline Neurath's novel Fartblinda inspired by the real-life billion-dollar Swedish banking crisis in 2010.
Three seasons in and Blinded continues to deliver on juicy plots drawn from real news headlines – again led by writer Jonsson – while also finding new conundrums for journalist Bea Farkas to contend with. When Blinded launched in 2019, Julia Ragnarsson was still a new name for most international audiences. Six years later, she's a bona fide star of Swedish TV, including Two Sisters, Spring Tide, and End of Summer. The third and latest series of Blinded builds on the best aspects of the first two series, with romantic entanglements and white-collar corruption as the staple storylines. This time, terrorism, war and dubious business operations in the Middle East threaten the careers, and the lives, of Farkas and Karim Abassi (Maxwell Cunningham), her colleague and romantic interest.
While she’s a journalist by profession, Farkas definitely blurs the boundaries between media hound, detective, conspirator, and witness to massive international criminal syndicates. Her fearlessness makes her heroic, while her romantic encounters with men who are not what they seem to be (jailed banker Peder was the epitome of bad decisions) make her lovably flawed and sympathetic. When Abassi enters the newsroom for this latest season, and their eyes lock, viewers would be forgiven for both cringing and praying that Farkas finally falls for a good guy.
And for the most part, Abassi is a good guy. He’s an accomplished journalist who is compassionate and curious in his conversations with colleagues and subjects alike. That curiosity has landed him in some hot water, however. He arrives at The Daily Post with a stalker on his tail, a man whose wife divorced him after she’d starred in Abassi’s news story on female imams. This culminates in an event that also opens the first episode, in which the newsroom staff are desperately seeking shelter from a gunman, before we rewind back to the steps leading up to this moment. It’s a cinematic approach, newly introduced for this latest season. Rather than six chronological episodes, three key stories unfold like miniature films in two dedicated episodes each, overlapping with characters and plotlines to ultimately reveal both a broader web of corruption and the cost to public interest of media privatisation.
Maxwell Cunningham as Karim Abassi. Credit: FLX / Johan Paulin
The first drama focuses on a Swedish communications company, VasaCom, that has established dubious outposts in Africa and the Middle East, leaving deaths and debts in their wake. It’s near impossible for Farkas and Abassi to convince any of the witnesses to reveal what they know, and the CEO of VasaCom has set out to buy The Daily Post, which compromises their reportage and threatens both Bea and Karim’s careers. There comes a moment in this first story, which is echoed at the finale of each of the stories, where Farkas must choose whether to publish a story that might get her fired, killed or risk the lives of her friends and family.
The second drama centres upon a major Swedish hospital that is deftly sweeping some disturbing statistics under the carpet – patients are being denied care, or provided unfit care, and the number of deaths is mounting in secret. Farkas pokes around, peeling back the layers of deceit, until she finds a consulting company that has masterminded a public relations campaign to cover up their rort on public funding. Again, Farkas faces the ultimate conundrum: to publish her story and face a spotlight on her own imperfect journalistic processes, or kill a story and let some slimy consultants continue to disguise deaths?
It’s therapeutic to see journalists ... bringing powerful titans down to face law enforcement or public wrath
The third and final story, like the other two, has personal ties to Abassi and Farkas. A series of Swedish public schools, LOGOS, have seemingly been granted millions in funding for upgrades and staff. So, why are these schools understaffed, neglecting their students and operating in broken-down buildings? Where are those millions of kroner ending up? Abassi’s niece, Maryam, is directly suffering as a student at one of these schools, and when Abassi and Farkas follow the money trail, they sink into a complicated mess of family ties, international tax evasion, and murderous men with everything to lose, and every reason to silence pesky journalists. If this story got out, and the authorities came calling, it might imprison – or worse – Farkas’ father, and put a target on Abassi’s brother and niece for life. Can she – will she – do it?
Ultimately, Blinded is a form of catharsis. We are living in a world in which billionaires appear to be rewarded without chagrin for their greed and single-minded wealth creation, no matter the cost. It’s therapeutic to see journalists, from the ordinariness of their shared suburban offices, bringing powerful titans down to face law enforcement, or public wrath at very least – even if it comes at an enormous personal sacrifice.
Seasons 1-3 of Blinded are streaming at SBS On Demand.
