Only a few months ago I was gushing, here, about the first in the cult series of Forbrydelsen/The Killing, which I'd caught up with late on DVD. And now, oh joy, Lund is back on our screens for a second season ...
Image source: lifeofwylie.com
So once again I find myself not only addicted, but harbouring a) the delusion that I am actually fluent in Danish ... and find myself muttering for fanden! nej tak, er du sindssyg? randomly to myself (see here for a brief but excellent tutorial on swearing in Danish - click on the expressions to hear the audio versions and marvel at the cadences, not to mention the disjunct between spelling and pronunciation - you thought English was bad?) ...
and b) an urgent desire to refurbish my entire house in cool, clean Scandinavian style ...
But I digress ... the good news is that BBC4 has decided to give us a double whammy of two episodes per Saturday night, in prime-time viewing slot - a veritable gloomy Danish killing-fest of two sofa-gripping hours with no commercial breaks ... in other words, sheer bliss of the kind only Forbrydelsen Freaks would understand.
In a nod to the legion fans of the famous jumper, it's back this season, in the same chunky knit style, only a solid red this time ...
Image: guardian.co.uk
In my humble opinion, it's sartorially less appealing than the first jumper, but for die-hard fans the knitting pattern for the red version is already available here on Radio Times online, while if, like me, you prefer the original and are not handy with needles, Gudrun & Gudrun offer a genuine Faroese Sarah Lund jumper for 280 euros (here) ...
Image: gudrungudren.com
Lund of course is her unique, inimitable female detective self - only more subdued and a little broken by the disciplinary action meted out by her superiors at the end of Killing 1 (who could forget that kick-ass moment when she held up her fellow police officers with their own gun?).
Image: nordjyske.dk
She is brought back from the ignominy of ferry-traffic duty by her former boss, the mono-syllabic and oddly cadaverous-looking Lennaert Brix (above left), who realises he needs her help with a puzzling new murder ... When he asks her to give him one good reason why he should trust her with a new case (duh!), she mumbles some unconvincing apology for past misdemeanours, then says "but this is what I do best". Oh, don't we know that ...
Besides Brix and Lund, the cast is all new in this season - Lund has the usual dysfunctional relationship with a new side-kick in the form of Ulrik Strange (above right, played by Mikael Birkkjaer) - and the plot is all tied up with the war in Afghanistan and political extremists on opposing sides ...
Lund takes on the Danish military. Source: tvtid-dyn.tv2.dk
My only reservations so far, other than the new jumper: one, a distinct absence of sex appeal amongst this season's Danish politicians ...
Image: politiken.dk
(bring back Troels Hartmann, I say) ...
Lars Mikkelsen as Troels Hartmann in Series 1. Source:imdb.com
... and two, an absence (so far) of another great female character to equal the fantastic Pernille Birk-Larsen (played by Ann Eleonora Jørgensen) of series 1.
These are minor quibbles, though. So far this season is shaping up to be every bit as addictive as the first. Just please don't ask me out on a Saturday night ...
La Rentrée is officially upon us and one must rally one's energy for a new year and a new round of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed students eager for knowledge. But with summer out like a light, and the light itself fading earlier, we can look forward to cosy nights of telly-watching and DVD-fests.
I know it's a bit early for a best of the year list, but some of this year's stand-out TV series have a second season on the way to look forward to this winter - yay! - so here's my list of top favourites whose second series I can't wait to see ...
1) Who killed Nanna Birk-Larsen? was the question everyone was asking when the Danish series The Killing (Forbrydelsen, in Danish with English sub-titles) aired earlier this year in Europe and Britain. This is unquestionably top of my list and the best thing I've watched in ages. I read that the Germans and Dutch loved it for the intelligent plot, while the British loved it for the characters; put these two elements together and you begin to see why it developed a cult following.
Cast of Forbrydelsen/The Killing
Against a backdrop of a bleak Copenhagen winter, Sofie Grabol (centre above and below) plays homicide detective Sarah Lund, hell-bent on solving the murder of a teenage girl. I'd never heard of this actress, though Danish colleagues tell me she is Denmark's finest and a veteran of Ibsen and Strindberg in the theatre. Her Sarah Lund goes against all clichés of woman detectives you've ever seen; her performance is unique and memorable, the kind that inspired heated debates on Killing-besotted websites as to whether she is a feminist role-model or a screw-up.
Dressed in wellies and a trademark woolly jumper (the jumper alone having occupied as much media space as the speculation on whodunnit), with no make-up, her pony-tail grows progressively messier and her personal life more shambolic in direct proportion to her growing obsession with finding the killer. You may not want to be her, exactly, but you will badly wish you could have her as your friend.
There's no glamour, no car chases, glossy sex or crime-plot formulae in The Killing - just a great plot that keeps everyone guessing right up to the brilliantly written and acted final reveal, and a cast of finely-drawn, complex characters. One of these is Pernille Birk-Larsen, mother of the dead girl (played by Ann Eleonora Jorgenson, below), whose raw grief and unravelling is almost unbearable to watch, and whose relationship with her husband is one of the most moving I've ever seen acted. A thriller with two strong, finely acted women like this is almost too good to believe.
... though lets not forget cool politician Troels Hartmann (actor Lars Mikkelsen), surely the thinking woman's bit of Danish crumpet, who is running for Mayor of Copenhagen and whose office becomes embroiled in the murder case ...
(I'll include two pics of Troels, why not - I'd vote for him any day)
On a final note, The Killing has been re-made completely in America, using an American setting and actors - apparently on the grounds that, notwithstanding its huge success in Britain and Europe, American viewers would not cope with sub-titles. I find it difficult to wrap my head around this way of thinking, but mostly what I think is: how insulting to American viewers! If you haven't seen it, get hold of the original and look forward to being immersed in the intriguing cadences of Danish while being completely and utterly gripped by the story. (And avoid the temptation of reading about The Killing on the internet in case of spoilers!). Me, I have series 2 on pre-order from Amazon already (out early December).
2) For British crime, we were treated to Case Histories on BBC1 in June - the screen adaptation of the first two of Kate Atkinson's wonderful series of books featuring private investigator Jackson Brodie (I reviewed the latest of her Brodie novels, Started Early, Took my Dog here - see the side-bar), set in photogenic Edinburgh ...
I was both excited and nervous about this series, having very strong feelings about who could play the complex and engaging Jackson (anyone who's read the books will understand this). As it turned out I thought Jason Isaacs (above), although a sexed-up version of his literary character (see here for an amusing view on this), did a pretty good job, though my household saw some heated arguments about the merits or downright cheek (depending on point of view) of various departures from the novels (see here).
Fenella Woolgar and Natasha Little as the Land sisters, and Amanda Abbington as DC Louise Munroe
There's talk of a second series, though no date yet - one lives in hope. Meanwhile here's a taster with a typically funny scene played by Isaacs and his secretary, wonderfully played by Zawe Ashton ...
3) On a different note, and filling the gap for a period piece, was The Hour, which screened last month on BBC2. Set in 1950s London, it's about a group of idealistic young BBC news reporters who set up a new, cutting-edge (for the time) current affairs programme as an alternative to the dull, stuffy, propaganda-style Beeb news reporting they've been weaned on ...
Against a background of the developing Suez crisis, various sub-plots unfold, including MI6-sanctioned murders, Soviet spies and KGB recruits. Besides all the action there are doomed romantic liaisons, unrequited love and plenty of the class tensions and resentment the Brits excel at.
If you're a fan of The Wire, you'll be thrilled to see Dominic West going native in this one as the smooth, upper-class newsroom anchor and romantic lead (with Romola Garai above). But the star attraction for me was the wonderful Anna Chancellor (below) as whisky- and work-driven foreign correspondent Lix Storm ...
For some reason The Hour evoked many comparisons with Mad Men (which incidentally would have to top my list of best-of-2010 TV shows if I'd made one), though the two in fact have nothing in common besides an overlap in period and fashion. But I did laugh at one reviewer's comment in the Guardian who was amused to "see how American drama [Mad Men] idealises the aesthetic of its past, while we make it look really grimy and all the clothes look like worsted and everybody's tights look as though they're just about to fall down." Season 1 is available on DVD and a second season is in the making.
4) If you're still with me, Silk deserves a mention, as a very watchable legal drama series. Maxine Peake and Rupert Penry-Jones (below) are the leads, as two London barristers ambitious for QC status. Predictably, class and gender issues get in the way (he's posh, she's working class, while the roles are reversed for their two pupils (bottom), and the most interesting character is possibly the Machiavellian senior clerk (played by Neil Stuke, bottom) who orchestrates everyone's lives ... This is on DVD and series 2 will air early next year.
Finally, in an honours category of its own, I'm thrilled that Downton Abbey is returning this month for a second season - see here. Period drama (series one opened with the sinking of the Titanic and closed with the announcement of World War I), written by Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park, Vanity Fair) and with a fabulous cast, it's what the English do best, innit ...
... and with another round of the re-made Upstairs Downstairs, Downton's rival in the period stakes, due after Christmas, my viewing happiness will be complete. Out come the woolly socks and red wine, up go the feet ...
I've recently read two novels that were contenders for last year's Booker Prize. Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question, an exploration of male Jewish friendship and identity, was the winning novel.
Photo credit: www.theage.com.au
This was not my best read ever (see here), and I'm not convinced that my lack of engagement can be put down to the fact that I am neither a Finkler nor a man. After posting that review I was interested to find while browsing online that many other readers had almost identical problems with the book, often more strongly expressed - see this Man Booker readers' forum, for instance. It's not everyone's cup of tea, it seems. I was amused to read here though, Jacobson's tongue-in-cheek claim that he will spend the £50 000 prize money on a handbag for his wife ("have you seen the price of handbags?").
On the other hand, Damon Galgut's In a Strange Room, shortlisted for the prize, had me fully engaged from start to finish (see here). Galgut's story is based on experiences of his own life, raising the question of whether it is autobiography rather than fiction. He does a curious thing in narrating it, of switching (sometimes within one sentence) between first and third persons, so that the 'Damon' of the story is both (involved) narrator and (distant) character. My work includes an interest in the 'narrativization of memory': what we choose to remember, to give prominence to, and what we choose to forget or downplay, is all part of the selective process of remembering, and the 'connections' between events are the ones we choose to see. So I found it interesting to read here (and listen to here) Galgut's explanation of why "the act of narrating a memory is an act of creating fiction".
Photo credit: www.penguin.book.co.za
I'm told that Galgut has been compared to the more famous South African writer J.M. Coetzee (Nobel prizewinner and twice winner of the Booker), and I must admit that a similarity in writing style occurred to me more than once while reading In A Strange Room. The very obvious difference, to me, between the two is that you are never in doubt of Galgut's humanity and kindness.
On a different note, I caught up with two movies that were on the circuit last year - both coincidentally on the same theme of 'bourgeois wife finds late-life passion with unsuitable paramour' ...
In Luca Guadagnino'sI am Love (Io Sono l'Amore), the brilliant Tilda Swinton, speaking Italian with a Russian accent, plays the wife of a hugely wealthy Milanese industrialist whose carefully constructed life (and those of her family) unravels when she falls for a handsome much-younger chef, who seduces her first with his food and then with his, umm, magnetic personality. The point is really less the plot than Tilda Swinton, who is perfectly magnificent in a physical and mental transformation from immaculate, proper and designer-perfect wife in a stultifying patrician family ...
to cropped-head Natural Woman ...
Photo credits: www.iamlovemovie.com
The stunning visuals of clothes and interiors (the Recchi family mansion is the Villa Necchi Campiglio - take a look here) are the second reason not to miss this film.
Less opulent but no less dramatic is Partir, with Kristin Scott-Thomas (below) as the French wife and mother in comfortable middle-class existence who falls for ... the builder, this time - a rough-around-the-edges Spaniard with a dodgy past and a sketchy income. Her controlling, obnoxious doctor-husband, nicely played by Yvan Attal, is the third player in the dark twists and turns that follow (well, you don't expect a heartwarming Disney plot from a French drama, do you), but again, it's Scott-Thomas who really shines here.
Photo credit: www.ifcfilms.com
Both these films should come with a health warning to married women who find themselves tempted to run off with the hot handyman (this cannot end well!)
