'Van der Valk' Episode 1: Does Piet's unapologetic attitude make him a better investigator than his squad?
Spoilers for 'Van der Valk' Episode 1 'Love in Amsterdam'
The first episode of 'Van der Valk' quickly helps determine Piet Van der Valk (Marc Warren) as a character, and while he's not Barry Foster, the original actor that played the character in the '70s, he is still an unapologetic and undeterred force on the squad. After the body of Milan Bakker (Alex Hendrickx) shows in shallow water, Piet and his right-hand woman Lucienne Hassell (Maimie McCoy) are greeted with a new face on the job - Job Cloovers (Elliot Barnes-Worrell), a young assistant that requested to be on Piet's team to learn from him. While Piet is the lead character of the show, with Hassell and Cloovers playing lead counterparts, we couldn't help but notice Hassell's determination. Cloovers' need to impress Piet helped more than Piet's own efforts in terms of solving the case. While Piet's staunch attitude and his need to disobey direct orders from his boss Julia Dahlman (Emma Fielding) may seem the perfect bad cop rouse, he may have gotten a bit too much credit - well at least in the first episode.
Cloovers, an intentionally rapidly-speaking assistant who uses garbage cans to trip perps and statistics to understand oddities of the cases presented to him, is met with disregard from a disgruntled Piet. Seeing the relationship Hassell and Piet have - which is one of mutual respect - Cloovers even asks Hassell if Piet is commonly this unfriendly to people. Apparently, Piet was only unfriendly to the newcomer. Even though Piet's undeniable skills with astute observation and the need to always question things that many seem obvious may have given him the rapport of wanting to be learned from, he refuses to give credit where it's due. In the middle of the 90 minutes (way too long), we see Cloovers find out the whereabouts of Daniel Koolen (Hugo Haenen) which led the team to realize that Koolen was not a target, and his death was most likely a crime gone wrong - he was at the wrong place at the wrong time. They even found out that Koolen was having dinner with a woman on the same street that their missing victim, Kalari Ramecker (Arian Nik), lives on giving them access to cameras that caught the van that was involved in the crime leaving the street. All thanks to Cloovers of course, and though Lucielle tells him he's done a good job, Piet's compliment was rude as he told Cloovers that he was a great stalker. We get that Piet plays the titular role of a detective known for his ability to use observation and analysis skills to get to the bottom of a crime, but he doesn't do it alone, and he needs to take that into consideration.
Another interesting aspect was at the end of the episode where Piet attempts to arrest Bartel Peters (Kees Boot), the man that was holding Kalari captive because of orders from his boss. While the squad's goal was to find Kalaria safe and sound and arrest Bartel, they also wanted to find out who Bartel was taking orders from. After killing himself Bartel was in no position to reveal that, but Hassell's loyalty to her job as she was recovering from being stabbed by Bartell earlier, was unmatched. She was the one that gave Piet the lead that Eva Meisner (Stephanie Leonidas) was the woman who not only managed to seduce Piet and have him sleep with her but was the once that orchestrated the entire crime that leads to four dead bodies and Kalari being tortured. So, to answer the question, does Piet's unapologetic attitude help him navigate and observe crime better than his squad? Yes, it does, but his team's ability to do the same plays a critical part in the cases he solves.
Episode 2 titled 'Only in Amsterdam' will air on Sunday, September 20, 2020, at 9 pm EST on PBS.