(Credits: Netflix)

If there’s one genre that we keep coming back to in these freezing temperatures when the daylight fades faster than we can say “good morning,” it has to be a murder mystery on Netflix. Yet, what makes this genre all the more appealing during sweater weather is a very specific subgenre, Nordic noir.

Associated with bleak landscapes and cold terrains against the backdrop of Nordic lands, Nordic noirs feature unreliable and flawed protagonists who are habitually at the forefront. While they learn to confront their inner demons, convincing viewers to observe the bigger picture, small communities take a backseat, realising they are far from safe.

Then comes a plot twist that leaves the audience guessing who the killer could be, even though success is never guaranteed. And we know that still, you won’t have it any other way.

So, in case you’re a sucker for this particular subgenre, here are the three darkest Nordic noir shows to keep you warm on Netflix right now.

The three darkest Nordic noir shows on Netflix

Deadwind (Rike Jokela, 2018)

Starting the Nordic noir marathon with a Finnish crime drama, Deadwind on Netflix, tells the story of a recently widowed Finnish police officer. Following the accidental death of her husband, grieving Sofia Karppi returns to her work as a homicide detective in the Helsinki Police Department while simultaneously juggling her added responsibilities as a single mother of two.

As if those duties weren’t enough, when a disappearance rocks the town, Sofia has to join forces with rookie detective Sakari Nurmi, who has just been transferred from the financial crime unit to the homicide unit as Karppi’s partner. While Deadwind might kick off with a disappearance, it’s not long before their investigation lands on a dead body. And what follows next is a cutthroat investigation, unravelling a shady case involving corporate corruption and a massive real estate project.

The Chestnut Man (Kasper Barfoed and Mikkel Serup, 2021-Present)

Up next, we have a Danish crime series, The Chestnut Man, based on Søren Sveistrup’s book of the same name. The gritty crime thriller opens with the terrifying discovery of the murder of an entire family on a secluded farm in 1987. The series then cuts a chase to more than thirty years later, in present-day Copenhagen, when a young woman is found killed in a playground with her left eye taken out and one hand missing.

The murder soon sends the town on high alert, and detective Naia Thulin takes up the case with her reluctant new partner, Mark Hess. At the scene of the crime, they stumble across a tiny figurine made of chestnuts right beside the body, which unexpectedly joins the dots to the year-old disappearance of a politician’s daughter, pushing them down a rat hole of a dark conspiracy involving child abuse.

The Asset (Samanou Acheche Sahlstrøm and Kasper Barfoed, 2025)

For our final pick of the day, we have yet another Danish crime series, The Asset, which made quite the waves with its release last year. The gripping crime thriller follows Tea Lind, a reserved cadet in training at the police intelligence agency, who has her eyes set on a prize: to end the drug empires that caused substance abuse surrounding her childhood.

But when Tea is unexpectedly bounced from the cadet program, and her dreams seem to have shattered away, the mysterious director of the undercover division of PET approaches her to recruit her for a special job. If she succeeds in the mission, she will get a job at PET. However, before that, she has to pose as a luxury jeweller, Sara Linneman, to infiltrate the life of Ashley, who happens to be the girlfriend of Denmark’s most powerful cocaine dealer.