SBS on Demand: Black Sands, The Rope.

Icelandic crime drama Black Sands and French sci-fi The Rope both debut this Thursday April 7 at SBS on Demand.

Black Sands
In Icelandic with English subtitles.
All eight episodes available to stream.
Anita (Aldís Amah Hamilton), a DI in her thirties, accepts a job in her hometown, which is the only position on offer for her after having been forced to resign in Reykjavik. She’s returning, for the first time in 14 years, to find the village turned into a tourist trap, surrounded by black sands. Worst of all is that she has to move back in with her mother, Elin (Steinunn Ólína Þorsteinsdóttir), with whom she has a strained relationship, tormented by a difficult past.
When Anita comes back to the village, a body of a young woman is discovered on the sandy shore, who seems to have fallen to her death from the cliff above the beach. The investigation starts with the current captain, the village M.D. Salomon (Kolbeinn Arnbjörnsson) and the local police. Nothing criminal seems to have occurred until a friend of the deceased is found later that evening, cold, confused and covered in blood.
While the investigation continues to take unexpected twists and turns, Anita finds herself in the middle of a fiery love triangle, which doesn’t make matters any easier for her. It becomes apparent that the local police haven’t handled the investigation as well as they should have and there is a possible connection between this and other cases. A reckoning with her mother is inescapable. Anita is dragged down into the dark abyss of her past, looking for a possible serial killer and the reckoning turns into a nightmare.

The Rope
In French with English subtitles.
All three episodes available to stream.
The Helligskogen scientific observatory lies deep in a quiet zone in the Norwegian forest. The scientific community working here is bubbling with excitement, as they have finally gotten the green light to finish their critical research.
But something has just perturbed their project – a seemingly endless rope has appeared at the edge of the forest, as if abandoned there. The mystery surrounding this rope intrigues the little community so much that six of them decide to follow it and attempt to find the end… or the origin of it.
The Rope stars Suzanne Clément, Jean-Marc Barr, Christa Théret and We Are Who We Are’s Tom Mercier.