Hec series review: a Czech detective mystery with family drama

Czech Television’s six-part miniseries “Hec”, directed by Michal Samir, combines a detective story with a mystery drama, and after the first episodes it promises compelling viewing. The reviewer’s rating is 75%.

A village where everyone goads everyone

The title hints that in this series everybody is egging everybody on. The village is no idyllic place to live, and most of the main characters are more complicated than their lifestyles might suggest. The cocktail, in which a detective plot is mixed with family drama and questions of faith, guilt and forgiveness, was mixed by Michal Samir. He shot the six episodes from his own screenplay; according to him, the idea came from Iva Jestřábová, and the well-known arson case in the northern Moravian village of Guty near Třinec was just one of the sources.

In “Hec” too, an old wooden church in a village called Kouty burns to the ground in the very first episode. In the series, however, a long night party of local teenagers has tragic consequences, and it is not only the adolescents who apparently set the church on fire who goad one another on.

The stubborn behavior of the old-timer Majewski, played by Jaromír Dulava, can also look like arrogance. He plays a fanatic stuck in a faith as it was practiced perhaps hundreds of years ago. He plays him convincingly and genuinely, and his switching between languages feels natural, since the actor grew up in the Silesian village of Hnojník, in the very area where the series is set.

While the head of this mysterious family with many children is quite confident in his faith and in signs from above, the local priest Vojtek (Stanislav Majer) wrestles with his own guilt and loss of faith. He also wrestled with the flames that devoured the ancient church at night. The priest’s character, like most of the series’ heroes, is not written simply or obviously, and their development brings many surprises.

Investigation, relationships and secrets

Milena Steinmasslová, who helps Vojtek in the church, is as good as ever. A woman who seems calm and resigned to her fate is also the mother of detective Alena Kočí, played by Petra Hřebíčková, who is the central figure of the whole story.

From the first moment her haggard features tell the viewer that, as she buys a very worn-out caravan, she wants to draw a thick line under her life. Above all she is driving away from her married superior, played by Tomáš Jeřábek, with whom she has had a relationship for several years and who has promised her a divorce for just as long. But the church in the village where she has come to see her mother burns down just then, and the investigation brings Alena together with her lover again. She works the case with a young colleague, played by Juraj Loj; in other roles viewers will meet Jan Hájek, Magdaléna Borová, Jana Plodková, Vasil Fridrich, Prokop Zach and Petr Uhlík.

Alena is not the only one living through family dramas, though Petra Hřebíčková plays her with commitment and perhaps even an exaggerated degree of disgust at her disintegrating relationship, so the viewer waits to see what the coming episodes reveal about both partners.

The combination of an investigative line with mystery elements on one side and an arson that deeply shakes the whole community on the other gives hope, after the first episodes, of captivating television. The story has no shortage of surprising twists and, as a whole, it is well thought out and sensibly concluded.

“Hec” (episode 1): produced by Czech Television, crime/mystery, 6 episodes, Czechia, 2026. Written and directed by Michal Samir. Starring: Petra Hřebíčková, Stanislav Majer, Jana Plodková, Magdaléna Borová, Vasil Fridrich, Jan Hájek, Milena Steinmasslová, Jaromír Dulava, Prokop Zach, Tomas Sean Pšenička, Darija Pavlovičová and others. Rating: 75%.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz