In our second in a series of special articles on Season 3 of The Bridge (Bron/Broen), Ib Bondebjerg examines the Danish reception of the series and notes that, despite positive reviews, critical voices are emerging.
Warning: this article contains spoilers.
The sharp, observant reader may notice that part of the title of this blog is taken from Michael Booth’s The Almost Nearly Perfect People: The Truth About the Nordic Miracle (2014). Having followed the last three seasons of The Bridge, with its dark tale of crime and psychological and social despair, one might accept Booth’s critical-satirical take on so-called Nordic welfare states.
Viewers of the police drama are confronted with not only the most appalling forms of crime, social disasters and class differences, but also dysfunctional people tormented by their past and present family and history. Breakdowns and death are literally just around the corner – as is often the case with modern crime drama. But here the darkness almost seem to emanate from the screen and iconic shots of urban spaces around the Øresund region.
Figure 1: TV ratings for The Bridge: Season 3 in Denmark. Source: MeCETES
Despite this, ratings in Denmark have increased with each season: the latest had an average audience share of around 38% in the prime-time 8-9pm Sunday slot, the high quality drama slot on DR1. Slightly under a million viewers per episodes is good, though not quite as good as one of DR’s own drama series, where even the controversial 1864 had an average of 1.3 million viewers per episode (figure 1).
Bridging cultures: Scandinavian co-production
The Bridge is a ‘natural co-production’ in the sense that the story takes place in the two main co-producing countries; the cast is from the two countries; the financing partners involve two private production companies from each country; and the two main public service channels in Sweden and Denmark carry a lot of weight. However, as is often the case with Scandinavian drama series, the co-production partners represent a much wider national spectrum and group of funding institutions, which in many ways also makes The Bridge a European co-production.
The core-creative team is clearly Swedish-Danish with the Swedish Hans Rosenfeldt as the main writer, but also the Danish Nicolaj Scherfig as an important creative partner across all three seasons. In season three the Swedish creative dominance became stronger, though the main structure of a natural co-production has remained in place. Hans Rosenfeldt and the Danish co-producer Bo Ehrhardt from Nimbus Films have both stressed that, by using a story, characters and settings that crossed the border between two close but still different neighbours, they hoped to bridge cultures, to create a transnational encounter that could work for both Danes and Swedes in prime-time.
Danish reception of The Bridge has emphasised the theme of ‘Swedishness’ and ‘Danishness’, often in relation to the two main characters of Saga Noren (Sofia Helen) and Martin Rohde (Kim Bodnia), and forms of behaviour that are seen as characteristic for the culture of the two nations. However, both the creative team and Danish critics have also noted a strong element on transnationality and universality to the series.
In an interview for the first season of The Bridge, for example, the Danish director Charlotte Sieling said: “The team behind The Bridge has worked actively with the differences, which Danes and Swedes imagine exist between them. But we have done so to find the similarities.”
She suggested these differences lie in cultural habits and language – but also that basically as human beings we are alike. She pointed to inclusion-exclusion as the big theme in the series, a theme which may have a special form in a Scandinavian welfare state, but which can also be found in all societies:
“We have deliberately focused on the universal similarities. Therefore national icons are completely absent from the series (…) we have tried to create a visual form that gives the impression of a series that could take place in any urban space (…) in the darkness of the city we are all alike.”
A darker epic
Drama was intense in the third season, even before shooting started. Leading actor Kim Bodnia (who played Martin Rohde) left the series, thereby changing the whole balance established between the two main characters.
As it turned out the screenwriters had to use two new characters to build a new psychological narrative structure. First they shocked viewers with the introduction of a female Danish cop, Kirsten Olesen, who was clearly on the war path against Saga. Yet her character met a violent end early in the series, so in came a drug-addicted Henrik Sabroe (Thure Lindhardt) with a family history almost as tragic as Saga’s.
Henrik and Saga moved closer and closer to each other as the series developed, and their story sometimes seemed to overshadow the crime plot. One might also say that the series manages to combine a more universal theme of child neglect with a double personal history of cops digging more and more into their own troubled family past.
But the crime plot, which most viewers would have solved by episode 9 or before, was at the same time of a different nature than season one and two. Season one seemed to build on a global political agenda, but turned out to be a personal revenge tale, while season two had a real, global political plot linked to climate problems and terrorism, but kept the personal revenge story from part one alive in Martin’s story.
In the third season the crime plot is directly linked to family problems and child neglect, and on top of that the long narrative thread of Saga’s family background and Henrik’s loss of his wife and two daughters turns the series into a sinister, dark tale of family dysfunctionality. The murderer in season three turns out to be a neglected, hurt child who builds miniatures of the bad characters from his childhood and the way he wants to kill them. The dark side of a welfare society not even capable of protecting the most basic social and human rights is thus exposed.
Henrik and Saga’s story – the fact that they almost become a couple, the fact that they are tormented by their own family past, and the fact that Saga is accused of having killed her own mother – seem to create a Greek saga of how we torment and harm each other.
The image of Henrik’s utter despair when the body of his wife, but not his daughters, turn up after six years, and the following images of Saga’s complete breakdown and near suicide in the last episode is as dramatic, if not more, than the crime plot itself. The third season thus confirms the specific quality of the Nordic Noir, which juxtaposes the crime narrative with the social and psychological backgound of the cops investigating crime. Crime and the things that causes it are not just in others, but potentially in us all, seems to be the key message.
Success and critical voices
Figure 2: Danish audience profile for The Bridge: Season 3. Source: MeCETES
While in general Danish audiences stayed with the series across all ages and genders (figure 2), the series has attracted particular interest amongst ‘modern-socials’, a lifestyle group characterized by a critical, cosmopolitan outlook on society (figure 3). The dark, critical dimension of the series and the generally transnational, global and cosmopolitan dimension of the series matches more with the modern-social segment than with the other segments of Danish society.
Figure 3: Danish audience share for The Bridge: Season 3 lifestyle segments. Source: MeCETES
Reviews in the Danish press and some specialist magazines were also more mixed than with the first two seasons. The debate on season three particularly focused on whether the narrative had become a too complicated, fuzzy and confusing. In Politiken, the preferred newspaper of the modern-social segment, head critic Henrik Palle gave the series five hearts out of six, and called it “a stunningly beautiful piece of TV” and “a dark and sublime thriller”. The paper also revealed that the general popularity of the series in Denmark and beyond has caused many tourist to take very dangerous ‘selfies’ on the actual Öresund Bridge, where pedestrians are not allowed and drivers cannot step out of their cars, except in an emergency.
But the very positive review of season three by Henrik Palle caused a colleague from the same newspaper, Marcus Rubin, to challenge his views. According to Rubin the series lost realism and narrative coherence in season three, with too many side stories which did not make sense.
Rubin, for example, found the story with Saga’s mother and death totally unrealistic, and asked why audiences were introduced to a story about a female industrial leader with a young lover. Likewise, the specialist film magazine Ekko only gave season 3 of The Bridge two stars out of six, with the same arguments: an incoherent plot and narrative and two many uninteresting side stories.
The Bridge I-III – and more? – is still a major transnational co-production able to engage a large Noric audience and a growing international one as well. But while overall reviews in Denmark remain positive, critical voices are getting a bit stronger. Even so, at a time when nationalism is beginning to show its dark side in Europe once again, there is no doubt that this transnational series still provides a positive example of European cultural encounters.
Surrealistiske mentale og sociale landskaber – True Detective
First published November 26, 2015. Kommunikationsforum
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Ib Bondebjerg
HBO har gjort det igen – tryllebundet os foran skærmen med en sort og kompliceret fortælling, der vender vrangen ud på den amerikanske sjæl. Første – og måske sidste sæson af True Detective er til ende – den gule konge og sataniske seriemorder er fanget. Men mareridtet fortsætter derude i Louisianas subtropiske sumpe – i virkeligheden. Betjent Cohle, med Mathew McCognaugheys plagede ansigt og fortid, og makkeren Harts knudeægtemand i Woody Harrelsons skikkelse vil også hjemsøge vores indre skærm længe. Måske er denne HBO serie slut, men bare rolig, der kommer flere, og der ligger allerede et helt bibliotek online med fremragende, amerikansk tv-kunst.
Krimiens tre historiske spor
Der var måske engang vi europæere påberåbte os retten til at bære auteur-kulturens kunstneriske adelsmærke. Vi kunne i hvert fald hurtigt blive enige om, at de der amerikanere, som sad på det hele, sprøjtede forudsigelige mainstream produkter ud. Men det er længe siden, og har måske aldrig været helt sandt. I hvert fald har den amerikanske krimi-tradition præget generationer af også europæere. Nogen af os husker langt tilbage til vores barndoms og ungdoms krimihelte: de bar navne som Columbo, McCloud eller Kojak og de kunne være mere finurlige og intellektuelle eller mere actionprægede i deres måde at angribe samfundets udskud og råddenskab på. Men de fik afsnit efter afsnit gjort jobbet, og de var retlinede figurer og helte. Det var serier, med afsluttede handlingsforløb hver gang.
I Europa udviklede især engelsk tv tidligt sine egne genrer, præget af den særlige engelske forkærlighed for de mindre byer med råddenskab bag den tilsyneladende idyl. Den elskelige Miss Marble var en af de tidligste engelske figurer, men Lord Peter Wimsey, Inspector Barnaby i Midsommer Murders, Inspector Frost og Inspector Morse tegner et klart britisk krimispor. Man kunne gå videre i det europæiske spor, f.eks. med Maigret i Frankrig eller Der Alte i Tyskland.
Skandinavien har også sine egne helte på film og i tv, og i dag taler man internationalt om ’nordic noir’ som måske kan siges at udgøre et tredje spor. Wallander har gået sin sejrsgang i flere lande, og den danske Forbrydelsen har også været med til at forme en ny krimitradition, som blander amerikansk og europæisk: komplekse og visuelt stærke fortællinger, hvor tematikken breder sig fra krimiplottet og ind i dybere sociale og psykologiske lag. Det er måske værd at nævne, at True Detectives screenwriter Nic Pizzolatto var med til at lave den amerikanske version af Forbrydelsen. Selvom han i interviews har benægtet en inspiration, så er der et link.
Det narrative og æstetiske jordskred i den amerikanske tv-serie
Selvom der også var kvaliteter i den klassiske, amerikanske tv-kultur, var der alligevel noget forudsigeligt over dem. Men det var noget som ændrede sig afgørende da Hill Street Blues løb over skærmen i store dele af verden fra 1981-1987 på NBC. Pludselig blev krimihistorien til en stort udfoldet city-fortælling via en kollektiv plot-struktur, som både tacklede selve politiets arbejde og kriminalitetsbekæmpelse og til en bredt anlagt social fortælling om offentligt og privat liv i en moderne storby. Væk var de korte narrative buer i seriens enkelte afsnit, nu strækker fortællingen sig over flere spor og afsnit. Hill Street Blues ligger før det gennembrud for kabel-tv i USA i slutningen af 90’erne, som indvarsler en helt ny kvalitetsæra i amerikansk tv.
Kvalitetstraditionen er udtryk for mødet mellem en anderledes sammensætning af det amerikanske tv-publikum og et ny kreativ energi i tv-miljøet. Mellem 1960 og 1980 steg andelen af den amerikanske befolkning med high school uddannelse fra omkring 45% til omkring 78%, 60 % af kvinderne fulgte samme uddannelsesmønster og kom ud på arbejdsmarkedet. Samtidig steg indflytningen til de store byer markant. Det publikum som sad foran tv-skærmen i USA omkring 1960 var simpelthen helt forskelligt fra det der sad der i 1980, den traditionelle tv-familie, med sine traditionelle mønstre og kønsroller, var under nedbrydning.
Det er dette historiske møde mellem et forandret tv-publikum og et nyt kreativt talent som skaber serier som Hill Street Blues. Steven Bocho og Michael Kozoll som skabte Hill Street Blues fik store frihedsgrader i det kreative arbejde i forhold til normen i den traditionelle, hierarkiske og stationsstyrede amerikanske tv-kultur. Det store persongalleri, de mange plots og hele den mere pågående realistiske tematik og stil var ny. Da der først var gået hul på bylden begyndte andre netværk at følge efter med mere eksperimentelle og også ofte refleksive serier.
Fra Twin Peaks til True Detective: HBO-faktoren
Men det var David Lynch og David Frosts surrealistiske tv-serie Twin Peaks (1990-91) der for alvor rystede op i de vante forestillinger om amerikansk tv-kultur. At et tv-netværk som ABC overhovedet kunne finde på at spørge en syret filmmand som Lynch om han ville lave en serie til dem, havde været utænkeligt før. Som Mark Frost sagde om samarbejdet med ABC i 1990: ’Vi sagde til dem, at vi ville give dem en 2-timers stemningsfuld, dyster soap opera, en mord- og mystik-historie, der foregik i en fiktiv by i det nordvestlige USA (…) da vi havde afleveret pilotafsnittet, så sagde de, at vi havde givet dem nøjagtig hvad vi havde sagt vi ville, og at det vi havde givet dem var så fremmed for deres tidligere erfaringer, at de slet ikke ville prøve at fortælle dem, hvordan vi kunne gøre det bedre.’
Der går en lige linje fra Twin Peaks surreelle billedsprog og kringlede plot, fra karakter med usædvanlige dybder til HBO’s og Nic Pozzolattos True Detective,. Alene den faste intro er et studie værd: Dali møder Magritte i et visuelt orgie af musik og billeder, hvor karakternes ansigter og hjerne fyldes med steder, som bliver til mentale landskaber. Seriens indledning flyder af signaler på religion, seksualitet, ondskab, vold og smerte. Den tunge sydstatsrock driver af blues og tung rytme, som bæres videre i det fugtige, sumpede univers som fysisk præger serien, men som også fortsætter ind det sociale og psykologiske rum.
Som sine forgængere Frank Furillo, hovedkarakteren i Hill Street Blues, agent Dale Cooper og sherif Harry Truman i Twin Peaks eller for den sags skyld betejentene McNully og Rawls i HBO og David Simons spektakulære serie The Wire (2002-08) er Rust Cohle og Marty Hart sammensatte karakterer i en verden, hvor intet er sort-hvidt. De bliver suget ind i og ned af den kriminelle virkelighed de bevæger sig i, og de påvirkes ind i deres privatliv og langt ind i deres sumpede sjæl af de forbrydelser de er sat til at løse. Vi er langt væk fra den mere renskurede og målrettede betjent eller detektiv som bare løser sager og rydder op. I True Detective, som i mange andre af de nye serier fra HBO, tager karaktererne livtag med eksistensen og sig selv, de løser sager med dybtliggende og forgrenede motiver og sammenhænge. Den moderne detektiv er en Sisyfos, hvis arbejde og eksistens hele tiden rulles tilbage og afdækker en absurd og uoverskuelig virkelighed.
Mudrede vande: Kompleks narrativitet og visuel stil
HBO har været med til at sætte nye standarder for tv-fortællinger, fortællinger med en distinkt, visuel stil og komplekse tematikker og historier. HBO har ikke bare vist deres styrke indenfor krimi-grenren, men i en bred vifte af både historiske serier og samtidsdramaer. True Detective fortsætter hvor f.eks. The Sopranos, The Wire og Six Feet Under slap, alle serier med meget komplekse narrative forløb og karakterer og med en klar, visuel signatur. I True Detective er der en usædvanligt kompliceret tidsstruktur, som imidlertid fungerer godt. Serien har en rammehistorie i 2012, hvor Cohle og Hart på skift forhøres om begivenheder der går tilbage til 1995. Serien springer altså hele tiden i de forskellige tidslag, fordi vi både ser tilbage på opklaringens historie og får den udfoldet i en mere kronologisk udfoldet form.
Samtidig udnytter serien i sit visuelle sprog både de store, panoramiske billeder, de intense dyk ned i meget forskellige miljøer. Der veksles mellem melankolske eksistentielle situationer og stemninger, opklaringens detektiviske spor, privatlivets opgør og trakasserier og de mere brutale scener med mishandling og tegn og mystiske gerninger på gerningsstederne og endelig de i øvrigt relativt få actionscener. Samtidig er sam- og modspillet mellem de to karakterer et af seriens absolutte psykologiske højdepunkter. True Detective er en serie, som har åbnet endnu et kapitel i en central genres kunstneriske udvikling: det handler ikke bare om forbrydelse og opklaring, det er en eksistentiel og surrealistisk fortælling om vor tid.
The almost nearly perfect Swedish-Danish co-production: Bridge III – a Danish Perspective
In our second in a series of special articles on Season 3 of The Bridge (Bron/Broen), Ib Bondebjerg examines the Danish reception of the series and notes that, despite positive reviews, critical voices are emerging.
Warning: this article contains spoilers.
The sharp, observant reader may notice that part of the title of this blog is taken from Michael Booth’s The Almost Nearly Perfect People: The Truth About the Nordic Miracle (2014). Having followed the last three seasons of The Bridge, with its dark tale of crime and psychological and social despair, one might accept Booth’s critical-satirical take on so-called Nordic welfare states.
Viewers of the police drama are confronted with not only the most appalling forms of crime, social disasters and class differences, but also dysfunctional people tormented by their past and present family and history. Breakdowns and death are literally just around the corner – as is often the case with modern crime drama. But here the darkness almost seem to emanate from the screen and iconic shots of urban spaces around the Øresund region.
Figure 1: TV ratings for The Bridge: Season 3 in Denmark. Source: MeCETES
Despite this, ratings in Denmark have increased with each season: the latest had an average audience share of around 38% in the prime-time 8-9pm Sunday slot, the high quality drama slot on DR1. Slightly under a million viewers per episodes is good, though not quite as good as one of DR’s own drama series, where even the controversial 1864 had an average of 1.3 million viewers per episode (figure 1).
Bridging cultures: Scandinavian co-production
The Bridge is a ‘natural co-production’ in the sense that the story takes place in the two main co-producing countries; the cast is from the two countries; the financing partners involve two private production companies from each country; and the two main public service channels in Sweden and Denmark carry a lot of weight. However, as is often the case with Scandinavian drama series, the co-production partners represent a much wider national spectrum and group of funding institutions, which in many ways also makes The Bridge a European co-production.
The core-creative team is clearly Swedish-Danish with the Swedish Hans Rosenfeldt as the main writer, but also the Danish Nicolaj Scherfig as an important creative partner across all three seasons. In season three the Swedish creative dominance became stronger, though the main structure of a natural co-production has remained in place. Hans Rosenfeldt and the Danish co-producer Bo Ehrhardt from Nimbus Films have both stressed that, by using a story, characters and settings that crossed the border between two close but still different neighbours, they hoped to bridge cultures, to create a transnational encounter that could work for both Danes and Swedes in prime-time.
Danish reception of The Bridge has emphasised the theme of ‘Swedishness’ and ‘Danishness’, often in relation to the two main characters of Saga Noren (Sofia Helen) and Martin Rohde (Kim Bodnia), and forms of behaviour that are seen as characteristic for the culture of the two nations. However, both the creative team and Danish critics have also noted a strong element on transnationality and universality to the series.
In an interview for the first season of The Bridge, for example, the Danish director Charlotte Sieling said: “The team behind The Bridge has worked actively with the differences, which Danes and Swedes imagine exist between them. But we have done so to find the similarities.”
She suggested these differences lie in cultural habits and language – but also that basically as human beings we are alike. She pointed to inclusion-exclusion as the big theme in the series, a theme which may have a special form in a Scandinavian welfare state, but which can also be found in all societies:
“We have deliberately focused on the universal similarities. Therefore national icons are completely absent from the series (…) we have tried to create a visual form that gives the impression of a series that could take place in any urban space (…) in the darkness of the city we are all alike.”
A darker epic
Drama was intense in the third season, even before shooting started. Leading actor Kim Bodnia (who played Martin Rohde) left the series, thereby changing the whole balance established between the two main characters.
As it turned out the screenwriters had to use two new characters to build a new psychological narrative structure. First they shocked viewers with the introduction of a female Danish cop, Kirsten Olesen, who was clearly on the war path against Saga. Yet her character met a violent end early in the series, so in came a drug-addicted Henrik Sabroe (Thure Lindhardt) with a family history almost as tragic as Saga’s.
Henrik and Saga moved closer and closer to each other as the series developed, and their story sometimes seemed to overshadow the crime plot. One might also say that the series manages to combine a more universal theme of child neglect with a double personal history of cops digging more and more into their own troubled family past.
But the crime plot, which most viewers would have solved by episode 9 or before, was at the same time of a different nature than season one and two. Season one seemed to build on a global political agenda, but turned out to be a personal revenge tale, while season two had a real, global political plot linked to climate problems and terrorism, but kept the personal revenge story from part one alive in Martin’s story.
In the third season the crime plot is directly linked to family problems and child neglect, and on top of that the long narrative thread of Saga’s family background and Henrik’s loss of his wife and two daughters turns the series into a sinister, dark tale of family dysfunctionality. The murderer in season three turns out to be a neglected, hurt child who builds miniatures of the bad characters from his childhood and the way he wants to kill them. The dark side of a welfare society not even capable of protecting the most basic social and human rights is thus exposed.
Henrik and Saga’s story – the fact that they almost become a couple, the fact that they are tormented by their own family past, and the fact that Saga is accused of having killed her own mother – seem to create a Greek saga of how we torment and harm each other.
The image of Henrik’s utter despair when the body of his wife, but not his daughters, turn up after six years, and the following images of Saga’s complete breakdown and near suicide in the last episode is as dramatic, if not more, than the crime plot itself. The third season thus confirms the specific quality of the Nordic Noir, which juxtaposes the crime narrative with the social and psychological backgound of the cops investigating crime. Crime and the things that causes it are not just in others, but potentially in us all, seems to be the key message.
Success and critical voices
Figure 2: Danish audience profile for The Bridge: Season 3. Source: MeCETES
While in general Danish audiences stayed with the series across all ages and genders (figure 2), the series has attracted particular interest amongst ‘modern-socials’, a lifestyle group characterized by a critical, cosmopolitan outlook on society (figure 3). The dark, critical dimension of the series and the generally transnational, global and cosmopolitan dimension of the series matches more with the modern-social segment than with the other segments of Danish society.
Figure 3: Danish audience share for The Bridge: Season 3 lifestyle segments. Source: MeCETES
Reviews in the Danish press and some specialist magazines were also more mixed than with the first two seasons. The debate on season three particularly focused on whether the narrative had become a too complicated, fuzzy and confusing. In Politiken, the preferred newspaper of the modern-social segment, head critic Henrik Palle gave the series five hearts out of six, and called it “a stunningly beautiful piece of TV” and “a dark and sublime thriller”. The paper also revealed that the general popularity of the series in Denmark and beyond has caused many tourist to take very dangerous ‘selfies’ on the actual Öresund Bridge, where pedestrians are not allowed and drivers cannot step out of their cars, except in an emergency.
But the very positive review of season three by Henrik Palle caused a colleague from the same newspaper, Marcus Rubin, to challenge his views. According to Rubin the series lost realism and narrative coherence in season three, with too many side stories which did not make sense.
Rubin, for example, found the story with Saga’s mother and death totally unrealistic, and asked why audiences were introduced to a story about a female industrial leader with a young lover. Likewise, the specialist film magazine Ekko only gave season 3 of The Bridge two stars out of six, with the same arguments: an incoherent plot and narrative and two many uninteresting side stories.
The Bridge I-III – and more? – is still a major transnational co-production able to engage a large Noric audience and a growing international one as well. But while overall reviews in Denmark remain positive, critical voices are getting a bit stronger. Even so, at a time when nationalism is beginning to show its dark side in Europe once again, there is no doubt that this transnational series still provides a positive example of European cultural encounters.