Next of Kin review: Nordic gene editing drama

Next of Kin (Jälkeläiset) is a Finnish Noir TV series based on real concerns about gene editing with a bit of science fiction added in. Nika Savolainen stars as Liv, a woman who had lived all her life in constant pain. She discovers her DNA sample has been stolen from a repository. Her search into that mystery leads to a vast web of people and criminality.

Next of Kin describes a Finland where everyone’s DNA is in a huge repository. A company called Rise is protecting the repository. Rise is also involved in IVF treatments for women. As the series moves through 8 episodes the prongs of the story stretch to include IVF users, scientists, politicians, activists, and parents. It uses a big cast, I’ll avoid spoilers and mention only a few of the characters, because explaining who they are reveals plot points.

Liv meets Volf (Elmer Bäck) early in the first episode. He is mourning his 4 year old daughter, a child of IVF, who died of cancer. Volf and Liv join forces to investigate Rise and learn all sorts of disturbing things. One of the most concerning to Volf is that many, many children conceived by IVF died of cancer at age 4.

When Liv’s DNA sample disappears, it triggers numerous unknown people who come looking for her. She spends her time trying to learn what’s happening while staying safe from capture.

Rise is run by brother and sister team Sasha (Antti Virmavirta) and Yoana (Matleena Kuusniemi). Both were directly involved in Liv’s birth 30 years before. The woman who gave birth to her, Alma Volhard (Sarah Boberg), is assumed dead. Alma is actually in Denmark in a basement of her secluded home working on more gene editing experiments.

Another set of siblings – Peter (Sonny Lindberg) and Simone (May Lifschitz) – join the search for Liv. Peter is very ill, much like Liv, and thinks finding her will help him to a cure.

Over half way through the 8 episodes, the story of Liv’s DNA becomes more fantasy than fact. She is given superpowers. When she discovers her ability, her lifelong pain finally goes away. I found this plot wrinkle unnecessary and it turned me off a bit. There was plenty of drama with politicians chiming in on gene editing, protestors staging big events, and scientists in hidden locations experimenting with human genomes. Giving Liv a super human ability was more of a distraction than an addition to the plot.

However, overall I found this series compelling and interesting. All the questions gene editing raises were addressed. Is it only for the rich? Will it cure disease? Who should control it? How should it be regulated? Do people ‘created’ from edited genomes have the same rights as other people? What happens to the scientists who experimented with human subjects and failed?

The series is in English, Finnish, and Danish. It’s streaming on Hulu, Brit Box, and Roku.