Netflix Teams With Nordic Crime Author Jo Nesbo for ‘Harry Hole’ Series

Netflix is teaming up with Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbo, whose Harry Hole crime novels have sold tens of millions of copies worldwide and, thanks to an awkward English-language adaptation of Nesbo’s The Snowman in 2017, launched endless online memes.

On Monday, Netflix unveiled a new Nordic noir series, Harry Hole (working title), based on Nesbo’s novel The Devil’s Star, the fifth in his Harry Hole series about the obsessive, brilliant but introverted titular homicide detective.

Working Title will produce the Norwegian series, with Oystein Karlsen — whose new Leonard Cohen-inspired drama So Long Marianne premieres at the SeriesMania this week — attached to direct. Working Title produced the English-language version of Nesbo’s The Snowman in 2017. Directed by Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In) and starring Michael Fassbender as Harry Hole, the movie is now best remembered for the many online parodies of its poster, which featured a hand-drawn image of a snowman and a supposedly chilling message left by a serial killer: “Mister police. You could have saved her. I gave you all the clues.”

Perhaps hoping to avoid such fan mockery this time around, Nesbo will adapt his own novel for the Netflix series, the first time the Norwegian writer will pen a script for the screen.

Harry Hole was one of the highlights of Netflix’s Next on Nordic’s lineup, presented in Stockholm on Monday. New Swedish series include an adaptation of Amanda Romare’s novel Diary of a Ditched Girl, starring Carla Sehn (Sjukt, Love & Anarchy) as a 30-something desperate to find love in the perilous world of modern dating; and The New Force, a 1950s-set drama about the first female graduates from Sweden’s police academy.

Netflix also announced a film adaption of Alex Ahndoril’s Swedish whodunit The Key Series, a second season of its Swedish feminist crime thriller series Barracuda Queens, and a feature film adaptation of Antti Tuomainen’s Finnish crime comedy novel Little Siberia.