The conversation around Adolescence, the globally-acclaimed show that pierces the zeitgeist to succinctly outline the corrosive impact of online misogyny on the impressionably young minds of teenage boys and the growing threat of the ‘manosphere’, continues to grow. Taking it further is Secrets We Keep, a Danish series that falls on the fringes between social commentary, edgy thriller and a somewhat consistently entertaining binge-worthy watch.
What Secrets We Keep — known as Reservatet in Danish — also brings to the fore is the rarely discussed topic of au pairs. The textbook definition of an au pair is a young woman hailing from a different country who helps a family with childcare and domestic work in exchange for stay and food and, occasionally, a stipend. What this six-episode series, packaged in the form of a murder mystery, also makes a comment on is the exploitation and vulnerability of this demographic that is often treated as cheap, disposable labour.
In many ways, this series — falling well within the expanding annotation of ‘Scandi noir’ but embellished with elements that will appeal to a wider audience — treads the territory of Parasite, looking at the rot that has set deep within the well-heeled, masked as it is by designer bags, power suits, soccer moms and tycoon dads.
Taking place in North Zealand, an affluent suburb of Copenhagen, Secrets We Keep looks at two neighbouring families with a lot in common. Both have teenaged boys who are “joined at the hip” as someone points out, spending all their waking hours together, and a lot of it online. The mothers are good friends, veteran members of the ‘ladies who lunch’ category. The dads are business associates, with one being a businessman born into generational wealth and the other, who has worked his way up, being the former’s lawyer, accustomed to bailing him out of sticky situations. Both families, most tellingly, have au pairs, hailing from the Philippines. But the seemingly perfect lives of the two families — along with the privilege and power structures that define them — are ripped apart when one of the au pairs goes missing.
Secrets We Keep, packaged in six bite-sized episodes of 30-40 minutes each, keeps the viewer on the edge of his seat even as it systematically takes down the overbearing hierarchy of privilege, the racialisation of labour and how our system, more often than not, is skewed towards exploiting one class for the benefit of another. The series unpacks this form of exploitation with a lot of impact and precision, highlighting how domestic roles are framed as benevolent exchanges while systematically stripping workers of agency.
This is a class of people, as Secrets We Keep rightly reiterates, whose presence (and, in this case, absence) is rarely given any importance, expendable as they are in the larger scheme of things. The only one remotely worried about au pair Ruby’s sudden disappearance is Cecilie — Mary Bach Hansen is the fulcrum of Secrets We Keep and also its (shifting) moral compass. When her friend’s au pair goes missing, Cecilie is the only one who seems concerned, particularly because Ruby had sought to confide in her the previous evening but was ignored by Cecilie, dismissing it as none of her business.
The case opens a can of worms, with the narrative punctuated with many suspects, among which are the families’ teenaged boys who are regularly engaged in online misogyny. Seeing it unfold in front of her — both as a woman and a racial minority — is Aicha Petersen (Sara Fanta Traore) who witnesses the unravelling of a society where hierarchy is window-dressed in liberal values and where the smiles and “thank yous” quickly give way to blatant lies and convenient silence. Set in the same thematic territory as The White Lotus in its blunt exploration of the disparities between the hyper-rich and the disenfranchised, Secrets We Keep, however, lacks the satirical tone of that much-loved franchise. Which, in all honesty, serves its purpose well.
Not all of it, however, is done with the finesse of Adolescence. Created by Ingeborg Topsoe and directed by Per Fly, Secrets We Keep often sacrifices the gravitas of its material at the altar of stilted dialogue and amateurishly mounted scenes, brought to life by over-the-top acting. The presence of red herrings — many of which are unnecessary — impede the narrative to some extent. But at the end of it all, what is necessary in these times is an effort like Secrets We Keep.