Should You Watch or Pass?

As is widely recognized, the genre highlighting the misdeeds of the wealthy has gained significant traction lately. The newest exploration of this theme is a Scandi noir thriller focusing on a young Filipino woman employed as an au pair in one of Denmark’s affluent neighborhoods, who mysteriously disappears. There seems to be general apathy towards her absence, with some suspecting that she either fled or engaged in risky behavior. However, a resident of the area, along with the au pair’s friend, does show concern, and as they delve deeper, they uncover unsettling truths about their upscale community.

Opening Shot: The camera pushes in on a woman staring at the ocean. Then she turns around and we see a scared look on her face.

The Gist: The subsequent development is a call received by the police dispatch in North Zealand, a prestigious neighborhood in Denmark. The dispatcher, speaking with the woman on the line requesting assistance, hears her utter, “It’s too late.”

Cecile (Marie Bach Hansen), residing in the vicinity with her husband Mike (Simon Sears), observes Ruby (Donna Levkovski), the au pair for their friends Katrina (Danica Curcic) and Rasmus (Lars Ranthe), placing something in a neighbor’s trash bin. Angel (Excel Busano), the au pair working for Cecilia’s family, invites Ruby over for a meal. During the dinner, Ruby confides in Cecilia about her inability to continue living with Katrina and Rasmus. With genuine concern, Cecilia advises Ruby that if she is dissatisfied, she should communicate her feelings to them directly.

The next morning, Kat comes by to say that Ruby is nowhere to be found. It seems that Kat and Rasmus are concerned but not enough to think she’s missing; they’ve heard of a number of au pairs, especially ones from the Philippines like Ruby and Angel are, tend to leave without notice for better opportunities. Cecile and Angel, though, are both concerned; Angel is especially worried, since she knows Ruby well and she doesn’t think it’s in her nature to just leave.

When the four of them go to Kat and Rasmus’ house for dinner that night, they look in the basement, where Ruby’s room was. Her passport and a lot of cash were there, along with her clothes.

Cecile becomes even more concerned when Mike tells her about a flippant joke Rasmus made about Ruby’s disappearance. She finds a box from a pregnancy test next to the bins where she saw Ruby before she disappeared, then sees Rasmus nearby, walking his dog. It all feels like too much of a coincidence, but Mike tells her not to spread gossip.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Secrets We Keep — not to be confused with The Secrets We Keep, the 2020 movie starring Noomi Rapace and Chris Messina — is similar to other missing-person dramas like Missing You and The Gone, combined with wealthy-people-are-terrible series like The Undoing.

Our Take: Created by Ingeborg Topsøe, Secrets We Keep tells its story in relatively brief episodes that are around 34-38 minutes; only the series finale goes over 40 minutes. What surprised us about the first episode is that Topsøe fits a lot of narrative in a brief runtime; normally when we see a first episode of a drama that is that short, it feels more like it’s an hourlong episode cut in half, leaving us with very little information about the characters. This show, however, left us wanting to see more because we got more than enough information about everyone involved.

It’s pretty apparent that Cecile is going to be one of the only people in her circle of friends and associates, aside from Angel, to push to find out what happened to Ruby. A new police detective, Aicha (Sara Fanta Traore) is assigned to the case, but it already seems that a missing Filipino au pair isn’t high on the priority list for the police or Ruby’s employers. It’s a story of privilege and dismissiveness, with people like Rasmus jumping to conclusions about Angel that are borderline racist, all the while never escaping suspicion he had something to do with her disappearance.

There are some layers to this story, ones that Cecile will likely uncover as she and the detective probe more. For instance Nat and Rasmus’ son Oscar (Frode Bilde Rønsholt) seems to have a bit of a voyeuristic streak, as we see from his use of a drone and VR goggles, and he also seemed to be the only one to visit Ruby down in the basement. Mike and Rasmus have a business deal going on that may cloud things. And what is Oscar’s influence over Cecile and Mike’s older son Viggo (Lukas Zuperka), who adores Angel like she’s a second mother?

Any 34-minute episode that generates all of those questions and intriguing storylines is a good sign that the rest of the story will be tightly told, without a lot of red herrings and other distractions.

Sex and Skin: Some of that voyeurism is seen when Mike and Cecile have some mildly rough sex up against the massive bedroom window in their modern house with floor-to-ceiling windows. See below.

Parting Shot: As Mike takes Cecile up against the window of their room, we see some blurry footage from what is likely a drone outside the house.

Sleeper Star: Lars Ranthe is creepy AF as Rasmus. You immediately think he has something to do with Angel’s disappearance, but we’re sure nothing is as it seems at first.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Rasmus kisses Kat — who is much taller than he is — hello, he grabs her ass with both hands, even though Cecile and Mike are there. Yeesh.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Secrets We Keep is a thriller that doesn’t try to distract viewers by sending them down too many dead ends, and tells a story about class, race and wealth in the process.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.