Dicte is more a soap opera than a detective/crime/journalism series. At least that's how I felt. There is a lot of family and friend drama, lots of cheating, sleeping around, etc. packed into one season. It seems that everything in the town that is worth a big story happens to Dicte, or right where she is, or to someone she knows, etc. Perhaps the town is too small. Or perhaps we are to appreciate that time passes between each story (two episodes each) so other, perhaps important, things have happened but Dicte wasn't there to poke her nose in. Regardless, many of the story lines seem contrived. But perhaps the one thing that really bothered me was the whole season seemed like a pro-life advertisement. Of course, this is done in a Danish, liberal sort of way, but still there is this overwhelming subliminal message (ok, not so subliminal...) that giving away your newborn is bad, that abortion is bad, that mothers who have to make these choices are, well, not good. And of course, all homes for children are bad, full of adults who want to abuse the children... In a way, the series can be interpreted as positive in many aspects regarding these issues (as Dicte is a good mother, despite the fact that she did give away her first born after being forced to by her religious parents) but somehow every time it tried to give some great message about babies and mothers, it seemed judgmental to me. Maybe something got lost in translation, or maybe, as someone suggested, the writing was not great to begin with. The series could have been more brooding and realistic if the chose to show the lives of some of the other characters, like the lonely detective, Wagner, but it seems like they wanted to keep the show more mainstream. Congrats for having a female gay character who actually has a healthy dating life and is not afraid to talk about it, but again, more on that would have been great.
All in all, Dicte is not at the same level with Wallander, for example, mostly due to the contrived stories and some weird thematic choices. The acting is actually descent, sometimes much better than descent, but the writing certainly has a long way to go.
