The Killing (warning massive spoiler alert)

Off topic. Just finished watching first series of "The Killing".  It was utterly brilliant and had me hooked right from the start. Amazing how quickly I didn't even notice it was in Danish.

But...(WARNING MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT)

The series is 20 hours long. For around 18 of those hours the plotting is pretty perfect, false lead follows on false lead each one ratcheting up the tension. I can only recall a few times I thought it went wrong

• Nanna's phone being tampered with. Made little sense at the time and even less when we learn it was done at the behest of Jens. Jens is a fourth rate politician of little power or influence. Its hard to see why a senior policeman with 36 years experience would risk his career for him. 

• when Hartmann sacks Morten when he thinks he was the source of leaks, the option someone else had used his laptop was way more obvious and Morten would have been far more forceful about this as an explanation. Makes even less sense when you find out later Morten was the only one to know about Hartmann's suicide attempt and you the final last minutes reveal of Morten's ruthlessness.
• Olav going to Bremer when he is under pressure. Why go to Bremer, presumably he was talking to Jens on the phone? Closely linked Jens killing Olav, bit extreme a reaction?? Jens committing suicide by cop also a bit extreme but guess borderline credible.

But  very sadly it all went horribly wrong at the end, when you find out Vagn is the killer. This revealed a huge number of holes in the previously pristine script. In no particular order as they occur to me are:

• Standard procedure in all such cases is to suspect the nearest and dearest, since more often than not they did the killing. Vagn would have been a prime suspect from the start, his alibi and all the questions about his background would have come up much earlier. 
• Vagn cancelled a major job to be able to commit the crime. The customer was very upset by this (as we found out later).  99/100 the customer would be on the phone next working day to complain to the boss (and even if not his lie would have been picked up by the police questioning him as above.) 
• Contrary to earlier suggestions Vagn was not a serial killer. In the end the killing was an unpremeditated crime of passion.  So the earlier clues about the killing seem unlikley:
• > Cutting the fingernails. Possible I suppose
• >Using a condom for all the rapes. Highly unlikely especially for the first one. 
• > For Mette's killing Vagn wrapped the body in his own company's material. Not exactly a sign of the most intelligent killer in the world.
• Evidence from the flat showed Nanna resisted her killer. Yet Vagn showed no signs of being in a fight immediately after
• The fight in the flat was intense. Yet Vagn left no trace, no blood, no finger prints. 
• How did the black necklace get into Nanna's hand?
• How did the video rental card/bloodied clothing get dropped?
• Leon either knew Vagn was the killer or would have had a very strong suspicion he did. How/why did he keep quiet about this?
• If he wanted to cover it up why did he go to the police with the evidence he had picked Nanna up, especially since it put him in the position of being forced to lie about the fact he worked for Theis part time?
• All employees would have been suspects. Leon would have been known and already questioned. 
• Why did Leon flee and stay fleeing?  He phoned his brother and Lund while doing so. All he needed to do tell either of them he had told Vagn about Nanna.
• How did Leon die? Suicide makes no sense, he wasn't the killer. If Vagn killed him how did he find him?
• Why did Vagn tell Theis and Pernille about Nanna's passport?
• Why did Vagn keep the sweatshirt with Sara 84? If he was so obsessive about cleaning Nannas fingernails he would have destroyed all the clothes he was wearing while killing a policeman. 
• Why did Vagn take Nanna to the new house? Through his job Vagn would have known of lots of other much safer locations. Taking her to the house was reckless in terms of the risk of leaving evidence behind and alerting/being seen by neighbours. It also shows a degree of callousness towards the rest of the family that doesn't ring true.
• Why did Amir wait so long to tell his story?

 And on the political storyline

• After it becomes clear Morten tried to cover up for Hartmann not Rie why does Hartmann just accept this? He had no compunction sacking Morten for a much more trivial offence just a few days earlier.
• Even if Hartmann rolls over why expect Rie to? She has shown herself to consistently be a shrewd operator with a hard streak. Moreover she has a very powerful father.  Would she just accept being accused of a serious crime that she did not commit?