Oh Denmark!

(from the Guardian Borgen blog)

Remember way back in September I wrote about how much I love The Killing? Well now I have a new subtitled love: Borgen. Borgen is made by the same people who made The Killing and has a few of the same actors but this time it’s a political drama. Beginning with Birgitte Nyborg  becoming Denmark's first woman Prime Minister (which has actually just happened in real life Denmark), Borgen follows her struggles to keep a majority in a coalition government while NOT giving up her principles (Clegg take note), and dealing with the change from being a normal MP on her bike to being Prime Minister.

I order you to go and watch it NOW

If my ordering you isn't enough to persuade you, here are eight reasons you should watch it:

1. Birgitte is the first woman Prime Minister but they don’t make a massive fuss about this.

2. For the first 10 minutes of the first episode there was ONE man.

3. There’s no soul-searching about whether or not Birgitte should give it all up and sit at home with her children (touch wood! I’ve only seen 3 episodes, but I really can’t see it going in that direction) SO bored of people going on about women “juggling work and family” I stop reading articles when they witter on about it. No one has ever ever ever ever asked a man how he juggles family and work. I don’t think Mothers love their children more than Fathers.

4. Birgitte’s gorgeous husband (who played Strange in The Killing II) is always there to give her a snog and support.  

5. There’s no guilt tripping about Birgitte missing stuff she promised her children she would do – e.g. came home too late to read her son a bedtime story and her husband said “He won’t care tomorrow”

6. The other main character (so far) is female tv journalist who chairs debates and stuff on Danish news – like a female Paxo!

7. Passes the bechdel test with flying colours.

8.  It’s really good! I want her to be our Prime Minister. Can we kill Cameron and get Danish telly to write us a new PM?

Crime dramas with subtitles are the best

I am two days (and two hours of television) away from the end of The Killing. I’m talking about the proper, Danish Forbrydelsen (which literally translates as The Crime) rather than the American remake. The Killing follows the investigation into the horrible murder of teenager Nanna Birk Larsen by detective Sarah Lund and Jan Meyer. For the last few weeks I have been obsessed - and not just because it’s fun to say “It’s nearly time for The Killing” - because it is AMAZING. The main reason it’s amazing is because it’s Danish. There’s something about crime dramas in a foreign language that just makes them a million times better.

There is no doubt that watching things with subtitles makes you feel cleverer, you can pretend that it’s a deeply important foreign film but best of all, you can pretend you speak the language. When you watch something with subtitles you forget you’re even listening to a foreign language: I keep popping to the kitchen, thinking I won’t miss anything because I can still hear it. So far I have learned very little Danish but I have learned “tak” (thanks) and how to pronounce “theis” (tyce).

The whole structure of The Killing is better than any programme we have. For one, the pace is more like that of a novel than a conventional detective/crime show. Usually you get a case per episode/every two episodes, and so the stories are very formulaic and unfold perfectly, with very little in the way of confusion and dead ends. The Killing is just one murder (the “The” gives that away...) and the story is told through 20 one hour episodes which each take place over 1 day of the investigation. With only two episodes left (so 10% of the whole story) I’m not sure what will happen. There are so many twists and mistakes made the police that episodes were spent on suspects who turned out to have no connection with the murder. Rather than finding it frustrating and irritating, it just feels like we’ve been properly part of the investigation. There’s no feeling that Sarah Lund has more information than us – so many detective shows pull the solution out of the bag because of some “hunch” they had that we never knew about.

Another element is the characters. In the usual crime drama, there is no character development, the characters are just clichés. This is understandable given how much has to be fitted into an hour or two. In The Killing, no characters are cliché, characters are allowed to be a bit weird, or dark, just plain evil, without them automatically being a murderer or even a suspect.  Nanna Birk Larsen’s parents’ marriage hasn’t broken down completely, men are able to be tough and domestic, and Sarah Lund herself is able to be a workaholic detective without being mannish. Sarah is assertive and always in control, but without seeming masculine, and senior officers tend to talk to her rather than her partner. Sarah doesn’t have a tragic “she’s a brilliant policewoman, but her home life is so tragic” thing. Her partner, in contrast, is a family man and objects to Sarah’s long working hours because he wants to see his family.

It’s not just The Killing, at the moment BBC is showing the first series of the French drama Spiral. Which follows a team of detectives, two lawyers, and a judge and their cases which sometimes weave together and are a million times more interesting than any British series.

So then, the real question is: WHY ARE OUR CRIME DRAMAS SO POOR?