My regular readers will recently have become aware of my addiction to the Scandivegian police thriller called The Killing. What I had not anticipated when Chris and I sat down one evening and ended up watching 6 episodes in a row was how quickly I would be seduced into a love with all things Danish. Well, I say “all things Danish”, but to be fair, I don’t believe I would love the food, given that one of their favourite sandwich fillings is something called leverpostej, which is a pâté made with pig’s liver. Apparently, it was introduced to Denmark in 1847 by the French and was, at the time, an expensive luxury item. I don't share the Danish view of luxury, apparently.......
I don't believe I would love the weather either, as it seems to rain a lot, but that may just be a function of the fact that my main experience of the country comes from watching crime thrillers where rain and darkness are doubtless a metaphor for the bleakness of the murderer’s soul.
I don't believe I would love the weather either, as it seems to rain a lot, but that may just be a function of the fact that my main experience of the country comes from watching crime thrillers where rain and darkness are doubtless a metaphor for the bleakness of the murderer’s soul.
The Danes have wonderful taste – apart from the murderers, of course - and the police detectives who spend all their time chasing them so that they never have time to go shopping for as much as a kilo of leverpostej for the fridge never mind a new sofa or a nice silver jug from Georg Jensen’s latest collection. Strangely, the jumpers worn by Sarah Lund, the detective heroine of The Killing (see picture above), have become something of a design phenomenon. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, have a look at this link:
Much as the lovely C and I enjoyed the first season of The Killing - all 24 episodes - we loved the second season (thankfully considerably shorter or we would be seriously sleep deprived by now) even more. Interestingly, the black and white Faroe Islands jumper has a starring role again.......
When I mentioned my fondness for the series to three different sets of friends in the UK, they all told me I just had to watch Borgen, also set in Denmark, but this time a political drama. It seems that BBC 4 (oh how I wish we could get proper UK television channels in Singapore) has taken to showing European TV drama shows on a Saturday night. I needed no persuasion.
Denmark
is a pretty small country and that seems to be reflected in the acting
population as well. The serial
killer from the second season of The Killing is reincarnated as the Prime
Minister’s husband in Borgen, and Sarah Lund’s partner from the first season has a new
career as the manager of a TV station.
The change of job was obviously good for him - he looks much better in pastel coloured jumpers than he
ever did in plain clothes.
The
series is in Danish, sub-titled in English, with occasional sections of
dialogue entirely in English, which creates the impression when watching that
you can actually speak Danish. We have managed to ration ourselves to one episode of Borgen a day; just three
more episodes to go, after which we will need another addiction. Justified and Montalbano are already on
the list – all new suggestions welcome………
1 comment:
I'm a big fan of justified, very wry humour, can't get into the danish thing, all a little bleak for my sunny disposition... good to see you publishing again. call soon ?
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