I came into The New Force (original Swedish title Skiftet) expecting a smart, serious period drama. What I got was something more combustible: a show that tries to juggle crime, social change, and personal drama. It doesn’t always land on all of them, but most of the time it flies high enough to make you care.
It’s 1958 Stockholm, and the police decide that, for the first time, women may be admitted into the ranks under the same conditions as men. Our three leads—Carin, Siv, and Ingrid—are the brave (and naïve, and angry) women who sign up for a job they were never meant to have. We meet Carin (Josefin Asplund), fueled by a fierce sense of justice; Siv (Agnes Rase), whose ambition burns like a hidden firecracker; and Ingrid (Malin Persson), quieter, more uncertain, trying to steady herself under skepticism. They’re placed in the Klara police precinct, one of Stockholm’s toughest, worst corners, and soon find that the toughest crime to crack isn’t murder or theft, but the male prejudice around them.
To kick things off, their probation is hell: they’re made to wear skirts that “chafe like sandpaper against their thighs,” humiliated by press headlines, sneered at by colleagues, and dismissed by society. (Yes, that detail is in the official synopsis.) Their first case is grim: the body of a sex worker is found in a river, and the investigation forces them to step beyond “police window dressing” and fight for real agency. As they dig, the show tugs at Stockholm’s underbelly—poverty, prostitution, workers’ struggles, violence, and tries to show how the weight of public life seeps into private rooms.
One of the things I like: when The New Force leans into grit, it does so with conviction. The streets of Klara are dirty, bleak, and dangerous, and the show doesn’t sugarcoat that. The police station is not glamorous. The characters stumble, make mistakes, and face moral compromises. That makes their small victories meaningful. The pacing isn’t constant sizzle, but it lets tension build: red herrings and reveals show up at the right times; by episode six, I was willing to forgive a few detours just to see what happens next.
The performances are strong. Asplund, Rase, and Persson hold their own in every scene. They carry the show not as flawless heroines but as people forced by circumstance to do brave things. The antagonists work too: racist, sexist, classist Wallin (played by Jimmy Lindström) is exactly the stiff and hateful foil a show like this needs. Some of the male characters are one-dimensional, true, but in a show about systemic prejudice, maybe that’s not always a sin; their flatness underscores how the world saw (and often still sees) women in certain roles. Still, a bit more complexity among the men would’ve sharpened the impact.
Sometimes, the New Force is too eager to thump its moral drum. It doesn’t always trust subtlety. Some dialogue leans heavily on lines about equality, respect, and injustice that feel as if they came straight from a pamphlet. I found myself wishing that it would slow down and let characters live inside conflicts instead of always stating them. The tone can wobble from gritty to melodramatic. And a few plot threads vanish or feel undercooked by the end, as if the writers ran out of room.
Visually, though, the show is a win. The design team nails the era: the cars, the lamps, the buildings, the dirt, the clothes. The wardrobe deserves a special shout—those skirts, the jackets, the hair—all feel lived in. The cinematography knows when to hold a close-up and when to pull back, letting Stockholm breathe. The occasional choice to interrupt with split-screens showing parallel police work or to flash to archival footage in end credits adds texture when it’s used sparingly (though when overused, it becomes a gimmick). I also appreciated small touches—chaotic station offices, cramped corridors, the way a uniform shifts across a body not built for it.
But here’s where The New Force flaps a bit: the balance between crime procedural and social drama is uneven. Sometimes the police plot feels like a backdrop; sometimes the social stuff overshadows the mystery. The show’s ambition to wear many hats means a few moments don’t get the screen time they deserve. And for a series supposedly grounded in true events, it occasionally picks the easiest narrative beats: a woman overcomes prejudice, gets respect that feels a little too familiar.
Still, the guts of the show are what make it worth watching. It dares you to root for women in a world that doesn’t want them. It forces you to sit with discomfort. It offers tension, occasional shocks, and moral ambiguity. It doesn’t act like a virtue signal; it acts like people doing their best in terrible circumstances.
By the end, even with its flaws, The New Force left me feeling invested in Carin, Siv, and Ingrid. I wanted more from them. I wanted to see them fight bigger battles, face harder choices, push through more limits. If the show continues, it has the potential to grow out of its early awkwardness.
In short, it’s not perfect. It stumbles when it substitutes slogans for character, or when it stretches itself too thin. But it works often enough, and when it does, it grips you. It’s not just a historical drama or a feminist call-out or a police procedural. It’s a messy, bold attempt to dramatize change. And for all its stutters, that attempt is worth seeing.
Final Score- [6/10]
Reviewed by - Anjali Sharma
Follow @AnjaliS54769166 on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times