Written by Wilhelm Behrman and Niklas Rockström. Five episodes, 2021, streaming on Netflix. Reviewed by Paul Tankard

The assassination of JFK, the leader of the free world, in broad daylight in a motorcade and in front of hundreds of people, and if not exactly televised at least caught on film by Abraham Zapruder, continues to haunt us. We find political assassinations, or narratives of them, compelling for the collision between radically opposed human qualities. A nation’s leader represents personal character or charisma, some vision or policy, public life and national cohesion; sudden death by human agency shocks us into recognising the power of the opposite human qualities, of private choices or destinies, of violence and chaos.

When the Prime Minister of Sweden, Olof Palme, was shot in February 1986, there were no crowds, cameras or motorcades. He and his wife were on foot on the street late at night in central Stockholm heading home after seeing a movie. There were no reporters, no security guards, no CCTV and a shortage of both suspects and witnesses.

The police inevitably had a number of theories, but nothing much by way of solid evidence to recommend any of them. The account of the crime in this five-part series is based on the work of investigative journalist Thomas Pettersson, who made a case that the assassin was Stig Engström, a podgy, balding, bespectacled 52-year-old graphic designer, who worked for the major Swedish insurance company, Skandia.

Engström left his office near the scene minutes before the murder. He claimed to have been the first eyewitness to have spoken to Mrs Palme and assisted Palme as he lay dying, and to have pointed police in the direction of the fleeing assassin. But as either a witness or a suspect, he might never have come to the police’s attention if he’d not phoned them himself the following day.

Police did not take much notice of Engström as he gave inconsistent accounts of his movements, had no obvious motive to murder Palme and came across as a fatuous attention-seeker. He’s a disappointed man, always anxious to ingratiate himself, but who no one at work, in the community or among his friends took seriously. Played here with sympathy and a satirical edge by the Swedish actor and comedian Robert Gustafsson, he is both obsessive and banal, calculating and fearful.

The case has never been satisfactorily solved. In this twisty and compelling series, Engström’s implausibility finds its perfect match in the police’s cluelessness. In 2020 an official inquiry declared Stig Engström to be the prime suspect in the case, but also that there was not sufficient evidence to prosecute him — which was in any case not possible as Stig Engström died in June 2000.

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 287 November 2023: 28