Scandinavian "Noir"

One of my good women friends hereabouts and I have become avid fans of a couple of excellent TV series that are filmed in Denmark and that feature strong - and believable - female characters.  Both series have been showing here courtesy of BBC4.  Thanks to a no-cost cable channel upgrade in 2011, I now receive BBC4 on a regular basis, for which I am exceedingly grateful.

Interestingly, neither series is dubbed.  Both are subtitled.  But the subtitles do not seem to scare anyone around here away.  I notice that local DVD stores cannot seem to keep enough copies on the shelf.

The first series, a thriller with the English title "The Killing" (the Danish is more properly translated as "The Crime," I'm told) is also a phenomenal success on the European continent.  It was also shown locally on Canal+, a French language premium channel, where it was subtitled in French.  Apparently it is also subtitled in many other European languages, depending on the country and network of distribution.  For US networks, who find American audiences generally averse to subtitles in a regular series, the series idea and characters were lifted completely, replaced with US actors, and relocated to the Pacific Northwest, one of my favorite geographic areas in the world.  But the US series just doesn't have the same effect; nor does it work as well.  In part because I already knew the plot from the Danish version, in part because a key part of the Danish plot features the Danish political system - a wholly different creature than that in the US - I found myself unable to keep interested when the US series was shown here on Swiss TV and would routinely abandon an episode part-way through because it felt "flat."

Of course, the US version may also have felt flat because the actors in the Danish version are nothing less than outstanding, all superb professionals with lots of prior theater experience.  The principal investigator, Sarah Lund, is a single-minded woman who brushes off the overt chauvinism of her male colleagues to focus laser-like on the gist of the crime at hand, often to the professional detriment of herself or her colleagues.  In the first season, for example, her partner is killed while involved in a premises search that had not actually been authorized.  Even though she ultimately solves the crime, she is demoted and reassigned.  Fortunately for us, her loyal fans, she is brought back to headquarters in Series II when a complex new set of at first seemingly unrelated crimes occurs.

So far, we have lived through two seasons' worth of "The Killing" and have literally hung on every moment, telephoning each other the day following the episodes (they are shown late at night) and reliving them.  I haven't been this emotionally "involved" in a TV series since the Rod Serling versions of "The Twilight Zone" in the 1960s.  The TZ is one of my all-time favorite series, although an entirely different genre.  We know that we have at least a third season of "The Killing" to look forward to and we can hardly wait.

Once Season II of "The Killing" had finished in December (I missed the last two episodes but my true friend taped them for me so that I was able to view them last week - the wait was worth it!), a new Danish series began showing in January.  Called "Borgen," it is a political drama rather than a thriller, with the main character a recently-elected woman Danish Prime Minister, Birgitte Nyborg.  It has the same tight professional feel of "The Killng," which is not surprising as it has the same producers and some of the same actors.   Prime Minister Nyborg not only faces issues that are relevant to contemporary Denmark, but also to contemporary Europe and the world.  Part of the magic of the series is to show the compromises that she must make, both as a woman who is a wife and mother, and as the Prime Minister in a world still dominated by men.  Even though I missed the first couple episodes (and am looking forward to catching up on them either this week or next), I did see last weekend's programs and find "Borgen" equally as fascinating, and as addictive, as "The Killing."

I am not alone, according to the Daily Mail.  Both series have received and are continuing to receive high acclaim, as well as international awards and nominations.  Best of all, there is a lot less gratuitous violence and a lot more cerebral stimulation than in many regular network shows.

I have a tiny tad of Danish heritage somewhere in my genes and I am truly proud!