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THE BRIDGE (BRON-BROEN) (2012-) TV SERIES REVIEW

6/18/2018

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*****

15, 30 EPISODES

Culture clash crime drama is as much a beautifully bleak mystery as it is a fascinating take on two sides of the same coin.
​The term “Scandi Noir” has become so embedded in TV terminology that it’s nowadays near impossible to find a crime drama without chill-clenched cinematography, an esoteric electronic score and a fog-flooded landscape providing the backdrop for the grisliest murders imaginable.
 
It’s undisputed that Scandinavia have revolutionised the TV crime genre ; their shows trading mundane murder-of the-week filler for commitment to cases occupying entire seasons. Meanwhile these murders - once mildly mid-week sensationalist telly trash - are given a heartfelt treatment as they document the consequences such crimes cause their communities.
 
The Scandi smorgasbord has spread far further than our Norse neighbours too. If it weren’t for the widespread success of Sweden’s ‘Wallander’ (2009-2014) and Denmark’s ‘The Killing’ (‘Forbrydelsen’) (2011-2012) on our shores, it’s likely they’d be no ‘Broadchurch’ (2013-2017), no ‘Happy Valley’ (2014-) and no ‘The Missing’ (2014-2016). Three of TV’s best Brit dramas of the decade.
 
The cream of the crop in the Nordic Noir cannon, however, is a crossing point between Sweden and Denmark by name of ‘The Bridge’ (‘Bron-Broen’).
 
A co-production between the two countries which first aired over here on BBC4 back in 2012, it takes its title from the Oresund Bridge - Scandinavia’s equivalent of the Channel Tunnel (is it a wonder that the Brits and the French remade it in vastly inferior form called ‘The Tunnel’ (2013)) - which connects the Southern Swedish city of Malmo with the Danish capital Copenhagen.
 
It is here that a mutilated corpse is chopped in half and straddled between the border; causing a police jurisdiction debate over whose case this belongs and inevitably introducing us to the 21st Century’s greatest detective duo.
 
On the Malmo side is the Sherlockian Swede sleuth Saga Noren (Sofia Hellin). She’s cold and clinical while blonde, dons leather trousers and drives a Volvo; much like your stereotypical Swede in the eyes of their Danish rivals.
 
Continuing Nordic TV’s knack for Bechdel-beating heroines, she’s also one of the most fascinating female characters ever created. Much like ‘The Killing’s Sarah Lund, Saga has a beautiful, but rugged edge yet plays rigidly by the rules to the point of compulsion while suffering from serious interpersonal issues shrouded in Asperger’s Syndrome. A condition which has never been portrayed better than the brilliantly blunt realism of Sofia Hellin’s masterstroke of a performance.
 
Her Dane detective partner is a burly bear copper called Martin Rohde (Kim Bodnia). A name harder to pronounce than it is to write! He’s jolly and jovial - an embodiment of Sweden’s impression of Denmark’s laid-back culture - with a love of drink and an easy-going, care-free attitude to crime. Perhaps too care-free as he sleep around and struggles with your average detective dose of marital and family problems. Specifically - in most heartbreaking fashion - with his anguished son August.
 
Each of the show’s three 10-episode seasons have worn the masquerades of conventional “whodunnits” with their lead detectives spending the course of each entire run investigating a spree of macabre murders carried out by criminals appearing to have taken a leaf out of ‘Luther’s book of ludicrous psychos . And yet there’s a poetic political underbelly to their madness that provides harrowingly thought-provoking commentary on the state of Scandinavian society; the crimes manifesting themselves as extremist right-wing responses to the sub-continent’s much-famed liberalism.
 
In the first run, we had a ​‘Se7en’-style serial killer determined to uncover 10 ugly truths about society. The second season took things to grander and more spectacularly preposterous levels involving an eco-terrorist attempting to vanquish theories of climate change by unleashing a lethal airborne virus; followed by a mildly more grounded third season with a homophobic, anti-LGBT killer who dissects body parts from his victims before piecing their remains together as clown-like mannequins. Lovely!
 
These cases are not core of the tale, though. It’s victims and their families are every bit equally integral pieces to the ongoing narrative. Whereas the likes of ‘CSI’ and ‘Law and Order’ would simply dump a suspect into an interrogation room until evidence briskly proved otherwise, ‘The Bridge’ offers insight into their psyche and backgrounds quite like no other. The identity of each season’s killer may be withheld, but it is of least importance as opposed to crafting characters we grow to care for as though they were our real-life companions.
 
Like the best “Scandi Noirs”, ‘The Bridge’ is a beautifully bleak experience; existentially encapsulated by its spectacularly sinister title sequence. The gorgeously grim theme song - ‘Hollow Talk’ by ‘Choir for Young Believers’ (a song I’ve repeated on my Spotify playlist more times than comprehensible!) - tugs and tenses the heart strings against the ominous, cinematic imagery of its titular border crossing.
 
Most of all, however, the series has a sense of location and place unparalleled on TV today. It’s what drives Saga and Martin’s breathtakingly believable chemistry and elevates it from a routine round of hot and cold cop. This is a tale of two cultures; drastically different and often at each other’s throats, but in need of one another if they are to survive the darkness of the outdoors.
 
A fourth and final season begins next week. Pardoning the pun, when this Saga ends, it will be a Saga sorely missed...

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BORGEN (2010-2013)

6/15/2018

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SEASON 1 EPISODE 1 
TV REVIEW/RECAP

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'Borgen's Brigitte Nyborg: The perfect PM?


​*****

A marvellous mix of politics and power play.
As utterly engrossing as ‘The Killing’ (‘Forbrydelsen’) and ‘The Bridge’ (‘Bron-Broen’) may be, if your only insight into Scandinavia was through the grisly grey skies, grotesque murders and sinister soundtracks seen in their TV catalogue of crime dramas, you might be mistaken into believing that this famously happy and liberal sub-continent behind Lego, ABBA and IKEA is the singularly most miserable place on the planet!


Like it’s “Scandi Noir” cousins (also productions of Danish broadcaster D.R and aired here on BBC4), ‘Borgen’ (Danish for “Government”) also features a female heroine amidst a backdrop of backstabbing, lies and moral duplicity. There’s even some sort of suspicious death early on...well, sort of...


And yet ‘Borgen’s Birgitte Nyborg’s (played brilliantly by Sidse Babett Knudsen) relentless commitment to her profession doesn’t involve looming over matted corpses while wearing a Faroese jumper. 


Brigitte is the Blairite-like leader of Denmark’s centrist Moderate Party; hoping to find the third way between terms like “Socialism” and “Liberalism” that her opponents in the Danish General Election wave around so insignificantly; while attempting to be a loving wife to her slightly sheepish husband (Michael Birkkjaer) and mother to her two children.


Certainly if I were voting in ‘Borgen’s fictionalised version of the Danish election, I wouldn’t exactly feel spoilt for choice. There’s lacklustre Liberal leader and incumbent PM Lars Hessellbroe (Soren Spanning) - a man so devoid of charisma he makes Gordon Brown seem hilariously inspiring - and whose career is being wrecked by a loan scandal. 


His opponent and frontrunner for next PM is the slippery Social Democrat leader of the Opposition Michael Laugesen (Peter Mygind) who spews the kind of ranty, ultra-leftist moral superiority of Ken Livingstone before finding himself similarly swamped with racism accusations.


I love too that the leader of the show’s Far Right Party is a toad-like toff to give Nigel Farage and Nick Griffin a run for their insufferableness. 


In many ways, Brigitte could be the perfect Prime Minister. Perhaps too perfect. She may have her eyes firmly fixed on that PM’s Office, but isn’t prepared to get her hands dirty to get there; her squeaky-clean honour often clouding her judgement as demonstrated when she fires her sultry spin doctor Kaspar Juhl (Pilot Asbaek) after his journalistic digging takes questionable means that might win her poll-sagging party the election...


It may be early days for its campaign, but it’s safe to say I’m already a bit in love with ‘Borgen’. 


I’m particularly in love with how real it all feels. Almost too real as Brigitte finds herself on the meeting end of a coalition deal; preposterously prescient regarding recent, real-world Danish political history (the series aired in 2010; a year before the election of Denmark’s first female Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt), but also spreading far further than its home nation in it’s sobering depiction of the male chauvinism faced by committed, career-driven women in the political world.


It’s not perfect. I can’t say I enjoyed sitting through the sex life of immensely irritating debate host Katrine Fonsmark (Brigitte Hjort Sorensen) who seems to sleep with the spin doctors of every politician on the planet. She’s an attractive TV newsreader who looks so much like Billie Piper it’s uncanny, but is less believable a journalist than Cheryl Cole working for NASA and her woefully OTT, cat-not being-fed reaction to her  P.R boyfriend winding up dead during sex due to a heart attack was Razzie-worthy.


What I love most about ‘Borgen’, though, is its power to make politics accessible. It’s a series every bit as much about power as it is about politics, balancing the behind-the-scenes boardroom grit of ‘The West Wing’ (1999-2006) and ‘State of Play’ (2003) against magnificent Machiavellian discussions that would feel right at home in ‘House of Cards’ (2013-) or ‘Game of Thrones’ (2011-) (minus the White Walkers and dragons!).


Even those utterly unfazed by suited men and women discussing coalitions while munching tea and biscuits have no excuse not to binge on ‘Borgen’. Moreover, no excuse not to be hooked onto its unrelenting grasp of power laid out in front of our wonderful PM-in-waiting. All she need do is reach out and take it for herself...


Television of the highest calibre.
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    Meet Roshan Chandy

    Freelance film critic, journalist and writer based in Nottingham, UK. Specialises in cinema.

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