You can escape the big city, but you can’t escape murder. That’s the sad gist of Netflix’s latest international acquisition, Bordertown.

Known in Finland as Sorjornen, the Nordic Noir adds to Netflix’s already impressive collection of international crime dramas. However, there’s something sweet and intimate about the 11-episode series. Just like how The Americans is never just about spying, Bordertown focuses more on the family at the center of its story than the crimes that plague them. The drama follows Kari Sorjonen (Ville Virtanen), a shockingly great detective who decides he needs a break from the horrors he sees everyday. Seeing as how the first image of the show is a young girl with her eyes and mouth sewed shut, that’s understandable.

Kari moves his sick wife and teenage daughter to a family house in the relatively tranquil town of Lappeenranta, a town that borders the edges of Finland and Russia. At first it seems nice. However, if you’re in a crime drama you can never have nice things, which is why shortly after Kari’s arrival, a serial killer starts to haunt his new home. Even more disturbingly, Kari’s investigation reveals the killer is linked to his own family.

Though Bordertown has the brooding, dark environments and intense acting of similar shows, the series watches more as a family-focused drama with a killer on the loose. There are horrific crimes happening in the background — almost all of which are done to young, sexualized women — but the main narrative is about this one tired investigator who just wants to have dinner with his family. In this regard, the show hits an interesting balance in its treatment of crime, swinging between the ambivalence of murder-of-the-week procedurals and the deep emotional weight of crime dramas like Broadchurch. This isn’t exactly a criticism of the show as this element serves to explore a crime drama story that’s always fun to watch — the good guy detective being stalked by his past successes.

However, there are several eye-rollingly predictable aspects to this drama. Kari Sorjonen is really good at his job — too good. Much like Sherlock, Psych’s Shawn Spencer, Monk’s Adrian Monk and so many other white male detectives before them, Sorjonen runs police work circles around his peers. He’s one of those investigative savants who only seems to exist in screenwriters’ imaginations. Likewise, Sorjonen seems to be the only character that has been completely fleshed out. The rest of the series’ characters, from his doting and frail wife and calm daughter to his stern new boss, feel as though they’ve fallen out of a book of tropes.

Bordertown is a brooding and predictable drama about murder, but sometimes that’s what you want to watch. If you’re looking for a new crime drama that’s a step above NCIS but will let you zone out, this foreign language drama is a good option.

Stream Bordertown on Netflix