Save Me, on Viaplay

About the only thing Thessaloniki Det. Despoina Loukidi hasn’t placed a bet on would be her capturing the serial killer terrorizing her former home town. If she did, she would probably get at least plus-100 odds. Of course, even a gambling addict like Loukidi probably wouldn’t throw her money away on such a longshot bet. Nevertheless, given the corruption and incompetence of the local cops, she is still the best hope several missing women have in co-creators Dimitris Simos & Pierros Andrakakos’s eight-episode Greek series Save Me, which premieres today on Viaplay.

Loukidi is a complete mess, but she is still riding on the fumes of her past triumphs, so her chief loans her to her former hometown force, at the behest of the local authorities. Her father, Menalaos, was once a cop there too. However, during his tenure, he and the chief made some ethically questionable decisions. Clearly, her temp boss now believes Loukidi is similarly compromised, by association.

Regardless, she and her temporary junior partner, Stratis Leris, who is clearly the best of a bad lot, have work to do. Two women were abducted, murdered, and dumped with their eyes gouged out, post-mortem. One woman is missing, while another will soon disappear, prompting fears they were also kidnapped. Rather awkwardly, the third presumed abduction victim happens to be Nicole Pomanou, a former classmate of Loukidi. In fact, the detective constantly bullied her during their school days, so Pomanou’s two sisters, Alkestis and Rania, are less than thrilled having her on the case.

Loukidi is a mess. She genuinely feels bad about her past behavior. She also endures a serious beating due to unpaid gambling debts, while the press torches her for the investigation’s lack of results. Yet, Loukidi fears she and Leris will never solve the case while the town’s power brokers continue covering-up the circumstances regarding the obviously related disappearance of two Muslim-Bulgarian Pomak teens two decades ago.

Without question, Loukidi is probably the most flawed, neurotic, and generally degenerate detective in Greek TV/streaming history and a top 10 contender internationally. Viewers will be grateful they aren’t her, but she is certainly compelling when on-screen, thanks to Elena Mavridou’s bold, uncompromising performance.

Unfortunately, the Pomanou sisters (who are even more neurotic and in some ways also degenerate) and their mother Areti (who seems to think she is the Greek Auntie Mame) cut into Mavridou’s screentime, with their incessant bickering, back-stabbing, and guilt-tripping. Their excessive flashbacks kill all the tension, producing eye-rolls and face-palms instead.

Not surprisingly, the eight fortysome-minute episodes feel like they need pruning. Some of those flashbacks would have been a good place to start. Simos & Andrakakos have a few clever twists up their sleeves, but the narrative really isn’t so complicated that it requires this much time to unravel. Still, the audience goes through a lot with Loukidi, in the way that earned a lot of fan appreciation for series like Mare of Easttown (which is a superior show by any measure). Recommended for international crime bingers, largely for Mavridou’s work, Save Me starts streaming today (6/18) on Viaplay.