“Hijack” and “Lupin” creator George Kay is no stranger to engrossing dramas, and in his newest Netflix series, “Blood Sacrifice,” a grisly Swedish crime thriller, Kay unpacks the unending mental toll of police work. It’s a psychological load that extends beyond law enforcers and spills onto their closest friends and family members. Intense, bloody and thought-provoking, the show is much more than a standard murder mystery. Beyond a single horrifying case the show follows, “Blood Sacrifice” examines the cracks and fissures that have plagued police bureaucracies for decades.

“Blood Sacrifice” opens on a Friday night at an emergency contact center in Stockholm, Sweden.  An operator answers a call from a hysterical woman begging for help. Through sobs, she frantically explains that a man is attacking her with a knife. The call ends abruptly, but the responder sends police officers to the woman’s location. The next morning, the officers’ bodies are found, beheaded, lying in pools of their own blood.

Horrified by the gruesome scene, Police Chief Lucas Lind (Anders Mossling) places homicide detective Thomas Berg (Jakob Oftebro) in charge of the investigation. Yet due to the horrific nature of the crime and the victims’ professions as police officers, Thomas is ordered to keep his findings close to his chest. Though he brings in newly minted detective Natalie Eklund (Electra Hallman) to his inquest, he finds himself turning to the one other person who may help him crack the case: his father, Alfred (Peter Andersson). A once-beloved homicide detective, Alfred was forced to resign due to his alcoholism and because he was found tampering with evidence.

With his colleagues, including his good friend and fellow detective Max Abrahamsson (Henrik Norlén), in the dark, Thomas scrambles to solve the murders. He also struggles to keep his cantankerous father under control as public outcry and higher-ups in the department demand answers. A week into the investigation, Thomas is still grasping at straws when another emergency call comes in. By the end of the night, two different officers are beheaded. Following the second round of deaths, Alfred and Thomas realize that the killer is specifically targeting the police.

Solving the crime stands at the center of the five-episode series, but “Blood Sacrifice” is about a fractured father/son relationship. The duo’s bond was irrevocably broken during Thomas’s formative years in large part due to Alfred’s deeply unstable and emotionally taxing profession. As Thomas and Alfred try to manage their emotions to bring the murderer to justice, Kay draws parallels between the duo and the dynamic Thomas has fostered with his psychologist wife, Charlotte (Lisette T. Pagler), and young daughter, Bonnie (Alva Peedu Järmén). Though the driven detective sees himself as superior to his father, his absence at home says otherwise. Additionally, interviews and encounters with the slain officers’ family members also illustrate the cost and harm of a job that was formed in the early 19th century and remains antiquated and unchanged in our 21st-century world.

While the haunting serial murders are the mainstay within the show, Kay also smartly addresses resentments in the police department between patrol cops and detectives and even officers who turn on each other. Alfred, who was a decorated investigator before being forced into retirement, feels slighted by the department. Meanwhile, Max can’t reconcile being sidelined by his friend and begins to investigate the crimes on his own, desperate for the recognition and shine Thomas has secured. Nearly maddened with determination to be acknowledged in the workplace, he starts on a path of no return.

When it’s all said and done, “Blood Sacrifice” doesn’t present any shocking new insight into the sadistic criminal mind. Instead, it offers a different point of view. In examining the pervasive issues in a long-revered policing system —  one that fails both its officers and citizens who are told to rely on it for safety — the series addresses how far the horrors of broken systems truly extend. For Thomas, unpacking what went wrong goes well beyond the headless bodies, terrifying phone calls and dead ends.

“Blood Sacrifice” is now streaming on Netflix