The Bridge

If you were planning a trip to Scandinavia this year, you'd be forgiven for having second thoughts.  The TV and film depictions only lend credence to the current news stories of a cold-blooded killer, featuring death, dismemberment, loners and Machiavellian double-crossing within the establishment.  'The Bridge' doesn't break the mould.  If anything it ups the ante a notch or two with a macabre double murder and some very dubious characters in just the first episode.

So far, it feels more akin to the violent and explicit 'Spiral' than its compatriots, with the necessary addition of dark-washed shots, rain and more rain.  It's gripping, or at least has hooks enough to keep an audience of BBC4 viewers watching episodes three and four next week (not least a cameo from a familiar face from the original 'Killing').

Where we may be in the minority is our unease about the main character of Saga.  She's almost a parody of Sarah Lund, a sort of Jennifer Saunders version.  She's not just terse, but silent or monosyllabic, and is so much at sea with emotions that she comes across as odd to everyone who meets her.  No-one has said the 'a' word, but she clearly lacks social skills and struggles to read faces and body language, taking words at their literal meaning.  Would anyone like this make a good detective?  She may be thorough, detailed and even a lateral thinker, but she'd surely be hopeless at solving a crime of passion?  Just as well that this is shaping up to be a misplaced-social-justice/abused person on ritual crusade kind of case, so she might stand some chance, but this misses the humanising core of 'The Killing', both series of which have so far been about family, duty and relationships.  Still less is it like 'Borgen', one of the most enjoyable and intelligent series of recent years.

We gave up with 'Those Who Kill' because its Danish credentials weren't enough.  And changing tops frequently and in public is no substitute for the amazing self-mending Lund jumper.