This article contains spoilers for Detective Forst episode 1.
Detective Forst is a Polish Netflix crime thriller that sees a maverick detective, Wiktor Frost (Borys Szyc) teaming up with a dogged journalist to solve a series of murders... after he's already been thrown off the case.
The first episode introduces this grisly tale and sees Forst and the other officers from Zakopane discovering the killer's first victims, what clues tie them together, and the beginnings of his unlikely partnership. Here's a full recap of what happened in Detective Forst episode 1.
Death on Giewont
Detective Forst begins with a snapshot of a man being tortured at a mystery location somewhere in the Tatra mountains; we also see Forst jogging through some woods, and glimpses of a sexual encounter with Agatha Osica.
We then follow Forst and his boss, Edmund Osica, leaving the town of Zakopane behind to travel to a crime scene at the summit of Giewont, one of the mountains in the Tatras. On the drive over, Edmund tells Forst to leave Agata alone.
A naked body has been strung up on the 49-foot tall steel cross that stands on the peak, putting the body on full display. After guessing the killer must have brought the body along a popular mountain trail (thereby destroying any evidence of their being there), Forst decides to climb the structure to inspect the body.
He recognizes and retrieves a coin that has been stuffed in the corpse's mouth. When he returns to the ground, he approaches one of the journalists who's on-site — Olga Szbebska — and Forst asks her to switch her camera on. The broadcast goes out to numerous stations, and Forst tells her the victim died by suicide.
He promptly orders Olga to turn the camera off and demands to know how she knew to travel to the mountain in the first place, even going so far as to ask whether she killed the man herself. In turn, Olga asks whether it was suicide or murder after all.
Edmund under pressure
Forst gets a lift with Staszek (later revealed to be an informant Forst works with) away from the scene. Staszek seems excited to be working on a "real" case again, but Forst tries to temper his excitement and asks him to find out everything he can about the coin.
After a night in his trailer in Kościelisko, Forst returns to the police station. His colleague Adamiak is annoyed that he's been assigned the Rozwadowski case. Another of his coworkers, Hanka, explains why it would be so frustrating.
Rozwadowski's son has been missing since October, but he is known to throw raucous parties at his father's home, disappear, and miraculously reappear months later... usually in casinos or brothels. It's a wasted effort, essentially, as the prosecutor seemingly always dismisses any charges from their investigations.
Edmund Osica interrupts their chat to take Forst with him to meet Zbyniu at the morgue. Zbyniu has assessed the victim's corpse and found evidence that the man was tortured and strangled before his death. Edmund uses this moment to confront Forst about his stunt with the media; Forst explains that he made his statement to rob the killer of the attention he thinks they want, hoping the killer will make a mistake next time around.
After they leave, Edmund is hauled over the coals by his boss, who thinks Forst is about to give the Zakopane office a bad rep and advises him to assign the case to someone more reliable. Edmund isn't exactly thrilled to be working with Forst either, especially since Forst was thrown out of Kraków for a mistake that cost lives. To make matters worse, Edmund is informed another victim has been found.
The second victim
The team heads to Kalatówki, where the naked body of a woman has been suspended by ropes at a cabin; once again, a coin has been placed in the victim's mouth, and Forst suggests the knots in the rope are the same as those from the previous victim. Edmund warns Forst he's growing more inclined to sack him, but they're interrupted by another officer requesting permission to remove a journalist from the scene by force.
Forst says he'll handle it, and marches off to find Olga causing a scene at the edge of the crime scene. Forst defuses the situation but presses Olga to find out how she knew to come here before they did, but she refuses to give up her source.
Olga puts forward her theory that they're dealing with an attention-seeking serial killer; since the murderer seems to be a step ahead of things, she suggests Forst looks into the police archives, betting that the killer has taken more lives in the past. Forst wants to discuss her theory and tells Olga to wait for him.
He returns to Edmund and asks to run a check of the mountaineering community against police records... only to be told Edmund's switching him over to the Rozwadowski case instead. So, Forst marches back to Olga's car, takes her phone, and inputs a location on her phone. He tells her not to send any footage to the press until he's seen it.
On the drive away from the scene, he reveals Edmund kicked him off the case. Olga promptly orders Forst out of the car. He refuses, and shows her the coin that they've been finding in the victims' mouths.
Forst gets Olga to drive him to Gubałówka for a meeting at a bar with Staszek. He's identified the coin as an aureus, dating from the late 2nd century, and has found that a pawnshop from Warsaw sold one to an anonymous buyer about three years ago.
New clues
At the bar, Olga gets a notification on her phone. The first victim has been identified as Marek Chalimoniuk, a man from Kraków who seemingly has no business being up in the mountains. Reluctantly, Staszek agrees to look into Marek more closely. Then, Forst begins to have one of his headaches, takes Olga's keys, and struggles out to the car.
During the move, memories haunt him; a voice can be heard saying Forst 'betrayed' him, and as Forst reaches for his pills in the car, we see a flashback of two and fractured images of two young boys searching a home and seeing the necklace he's been thinking about throughout the episode.
Olga finds Forst on the ground; he explains the pills are ketoprofen, for his headaches, nothing more, and she takes him back to the trailer. Inside, Forst finds Agata has been waiting for him, and she spends the night.
The next day, Hanka gets the address of the second victim, Maja Kotko. Despite not being on the case, Forst heads over regardless and meets Maja's partner. When Forst asks about the photos on the wall, the man says Maja was a big history buff. One of the photos is her grandfather, who vanished without a trace sometime in the 60s.
The evening, Staszek meets Forst outside his trailer. Marek was a history teacher at Jagiellonian University, but not a well-liked one. He'd found that some of Marek's students had leaked his phone number, so Staszek hacked into his cell provider's database, unearthing his GPS tracking history.
His last known location is the headquarters for Mountain Remembrance, a local historical foundation. Forst doesn't think this is odd... until Staszek points out that Marek's GPS never moved from that location.
The episode ends with Forst inviting Olga out to go "sightseeing". The pair head to Antałówka and break into the building. They uncover a hidden photo of a public hanging, but their search is interrupted by another man who throws Forst across the room and goes to confront Olga.
Detective Forst is now available to stream on Netflix. For more series to enjoy, check out our picks for the best Netflix shows we think you should be watching right now.
Detective Forst is now available to stream on Netflix. For more series to enjoy, check out our picks for the best Netflix shows we think you should be watching right now.
