All this as a 17 year old! He is so far gone wallowing in self-pity and the concoction of drugs he uses that he does not even care for Maja (the one person who possibly genuinely cares) and he steadfastly refuses to focus on a future path his father often drops the hint that he can get him enrolled in any expensive career course he wants. Sebastian has enough pocket money to throw the most lavish parties in town which includes expensive drugs and hookers. But all these entitlements aside, there is no emotional connect between Sebastian and his elder brother and father. There are yachts and an entire team at the disposal of these teenagers, weekends are for Paris, they jet set to Africa just to shoot some hapless animal (trophy hunting). The handsome, charismatic son of one of the richest man in Sweden, he sweeps Maja off her feet. Sebastian Fagerman, is a rather grey character. Why Sebastian did choose her? Why did she stay when everything was falling apart? And as a viewer you ask those questions in your head too. Maja keeps asking a lot of ‘why’ throughout the 5 episodes. There is phenomenal change in her as a person within the span of time when she meets Sebastian and who she becomes as a result of the relationship with him. As the show progresses, Maja wants to keep holding onto her past which is strength and flaw both, to her well-developed character. However since the story is told mainly from her pov, you get to understand the world she inhabits – rich parents with little time for their children, very little parental interference even when they can see that the child is going down a nasty slope, the adult world these teenagers navigate without the emotional bandwidth, self-absorbed friends and entitled classmates who attend drug fuelled parties like it is part of school curriculum / homework. Maja is shown to be suffering from PTSD and there are blank patches in her story. She looks utterly shocked and confused when the police nab her but her insolence refuses you to feel anything but contempt for her when the series starts. At the beginning, it is difficult to like Maja. The protagonist admits the murder at an early stage but denies the crime – the entire trial and the series is about why than whether murder was committed. The show unfolds slowly in a non-linear format and keeps moving between flashbacks and the present. The law firm that takes her case up looks confident but as viewer you wonder how can someone get off unpunished from something so grave – after all whichever corner of the world you live in news about mass shootings in schools trickle in and leaves its bloody marks on your heart. With Sebastian dead, wherein Maja shoots Sebastian fatally possibly in self-defence, Maja is left to face justice alone. Maja along with her lover Sebastian is on trial for the multiple murders. The initial few minutes establish that there is blood all over a young survivor ( at that point you do not know whether it is her own blood) and the audience comes face to face with Maja Norburg, an intelligent, beautiful 18 year old from a well off family. It starts with stark visuals of a shootout in a school. Once in a while, rarely to be precise, you end up watching a television show with zero expectations which stays with you weeks after it ran its course. Quicksand, the Swedish 6 episode series available on Netflix, is based on the novel by the same name.
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