Dough Review – This Dramatic Thriller Has All the Right Ingredients

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Category: Streaming, Cable

Published on Tuesday, 22 November 2022 19:48

Written by Janet Walker

Dough, from Topic Studios, brings to the screen a Swedish crime series about a botched robbery, five million euros, a failing bakery and two women, who through happenstance, meet and are ready to grab the second chance.

The series begins by introducing the audience to the primary character: Malou, played by Helena Af Sandeberg, a single mom, divorced, and on the verge of financial ruin and foreclosure, and Liana, played by Bianca Kronlof, the badass wife of mobster Steffe, played by Philip Oros, and the mother of his child. When we meet them, she is in Lidingo, an affluent suburb of Stockholm, Sweden, and we understand, as she is shoplifting boots for her daughter, Heaven, played by Nikole Baronas, her finances are equally distressing.

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As Liana runs out of the store with her daughter, she ducks into a local bakery, just purchased by Malou, and hides out for a minute. She sees a poster advertising employment and she explains she has a criminal record, and Malou tell her, "I'm going to give you the one thing I never received, a second chance."

After this first episode we are intrigued as each of the women are at near breaking points, and the stress as each confront a different aspect of life, divorced, nearly in foreclosure on the home, and on the opposite side, homeless with a child, is palpable.

Malou, a local to the community, is being shunned by her friends over her finances and the bank is showing up at her home. As she doesn't want to break down in front of her son, Hugo, played by Olle af Klercker, she drives to the rowing club, walks into the woods, and essentially has an emotional breakdown. The stress is overwhelming, and she falls to the ground in desperation.

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After she has cried all she can, she opens her eyes and see a black rope trail on the ground. She pulls it and it leads underground. Momentarily distracted from her financial devastations, she pulls the cord, and it is connected to duffle bag. For some reason she hesitates in opening the bag, but when she does, she finds five million Euros.

Simultaneously, Liana who lived in Denmark finally got her husband to tell her there was money from the heist and he buried it in Lidingo and she has to do dig it up and get him out of prison. So she is on her way, as the bag as a GPS box in it she is tracking it, and when she gets to the coordinates, she sees the hole empty and the bag is moving.

Malou, who is still in shock over her sudden riches takes the money to the rowing club where she finds the tracking device, by this time, Liana has arrived at the club. Clueless on how to launder money, she purchases a failing bakery and unwittingly hires the robber's wife, Liana, who has no idea that the money from the failed robbery that imprisoned her husband is in the hands of her new boss.

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What follows across the eight episodes are a cat and mouse game as Liana is trying to figure out who stole the money her husband stole, and now her ruthless father-in-law, Kangas, played by Johan Hedenberg, is on the hunt for the money and will stop at nothing to find it, which brings in all his mobster connections.

Malou, who is a mess, is trying to mend fences with her family, who remember nothing of her successes, and granted she hasn't had much luck in love or business and seem only to denigrate her at every chance.

With the Lidingo mafia sniffing around for the money, Malou is losing her mind trying to keep up with the bakery business, the gossip of her friends who use social media to manipulate and openly discuss her, using retail therapy to stop the insanity, and her son, who is gay, and found the money stash and is using it to elevate his standing on social media.

A dramatic comedy, Dough blends all the right ingredients to create a perfectly addicting treat.

Dough is streaming on Topic.

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Country: Sweden.

Language: Swedish, Danish, In English Subtitles.

Runtime: Eight episodes/45minutes.

Directors: Levan Akin, Mattias J. Skoglund, and Måns Månsson.

Writers: Levan Akin, Sara Bergmark Elfgren, and Mattias Johansson Skoglund.

Producers: Lisa Berggren Eyre and Martin Söder Nexiko.

Cast: Helena Af Sandeberg, Bianca Kronlöf, Johan Hedenberg, olle af Klercker, Nikole Baronas, Eva Melander, Philip Oros, Willjam Lempling, Sunil Munshi, Marall Nasiri, Selma Caglar, Erik Bolin, Laura Malmivaara, Lena Nilsson.