The Killing - Series 2 [DVD]

A lawyer is killed under special circumstances and Lennart Brix decides to bring back Sarah Lund to the Copenhagen homicide department from her exile on the Danish-German border - where she spent a couple of years checking passports - in the hope that she can help speed up the resolution of the case. This is the beginning of an exciting hunt for a killer who is only just getting started and whose atrocities reverberates in the Danish Army and the corridors of power in the Danish coalition government.

The young newly appointed Minister of Justice tries to negotiate a new Terror Act with the other parties, but this is made difficult by the murder of the lawyer since it looks like the person or persons behind might be terrorists. As ex-elite army unit victims start turning up, however, it looks like the Danish Army and certain politicians might be involved as well and Lund could be facing her biggest challenge to date.

Once again there are plenty of red herrings laid out for us to follow in the dark, gritty and wintery Copenhagen (I'm not sure Visit Denmark is necessarily overly happy with this depiction of Denmark :)) and again the strength of the series is the well-thought-out main story and the strong character development of pretty much everyone involved.

Whereas the first season had 20 episodes and lots of side stories focusing on the private lives of the individuals involved, this series is more plot heavy and intense and only has 10 episodes. We move from the local (the first series dealt with the murder of a Copenhagen school girl and the grief of her parents as well as City Hall politicians and their potential links to the murder) to national level but the focus is still real people with real issues as well as the overlying theme of terror and politics.

Sofie Gråbøl is once again fantastic as Sarah Lund - although it was difficult to see her so subdued and without confidence in the first couple of episodes as she is obviously still dealing with the aftermath of the last big case, but that soon changes and she's back to charging head first into any situation - no matter the consequences.

I watched it in Danish, so can't comment on the translation, but I hope they will give it the attention this brilliant series deserves.
A must see!

A latecomer to this series, I soon grasped the appeal of Sarah Lund, obsessively bent on solving the puzzle of brutal murders at the cost of her personal life, and wonderfully liberated in true Scandinavian style from any concerns about her appearance, or need to use feminine wiles to get her way. In typical small touches of humour, she knocks cartons of coffee over her colleague's desk, or misinterprets her mother's horror as she thoughtlessly waves around graphic photos of murder victims during one of the phone calls that always seem too urgent to be left to a more suitable time.

The series continues to stand apart by working on several levels and being more than just an exciting, tense, and pacy thriller. This is partly through the importance attached to developing the complex personalities and realistic, shifting relationships. Here we have the focus on the disturbed soldier Raben, who may have been incarcerated in a mental asylum to prevent his revealing the politically inconvenient facts of an atrocity against civilians in Afghanistan. His attempts to keep in contact with his wife and child, the strains on her in trying to remain true to him and the ambiguous role of her father, also in the military, all make for moving drama.

We have the usual political shenanigans, at times now bordering on farce. If Denmark has so much corruption and duplicity in high places, what hope for the rest of us? There is huge entertainment value in the continually grazing, "I've had enough sweets so I'll eat a pear", ball-bouncing, new Minister Buch, who is cleverer than he looks, but may not be a match for more ruthless operators.

If Series 2 suffers in comparison with its forerunner, it is because, being half the length but if anything more complicated, it is too condensed. This makes it hard to follow some of the labrynthine plot twists delivered very fast in short, rapidly changing scenes. Some of the emotional intensity also gets lost in this quickfire approach. Perhaps the producers needed to take more account of the needs of viewers trying to read subtitles alongside observing every fine detail.

A story in which everyone is damaged in some way by events and some points are left unresolved may be marks of a great drama. But this does not excuse flaws in the plot - such as why a trained assassin would shoot someone several times in the torso, rather than once in the head? (Need to avoid spoilers precludes other better examples).

Perhaps it is too much to expect even "The Killing" to avoid the pitfalls of such a complicated plot with so many red herrings that the viewer is left with too many frustrated, "But why and what about?" questions at the end. This may be the "downside" of the author writing one step ahead of the filming, the plus side being the vitality and spontaneity of many scenes.

Could the second series of a foreign drama with subtitles be any better than it's predecessor? Fans of The Killing - Series 1 [DVD] [2010] were given 20 hours with the Birk Larsen family, the charismatic Troels Hartmann and the one and only Sarah Lund. Back then we were to explore a host of characters and for the first time in a drama series we were given the opportunity to explore the grief of a family who had just lost a daughter. How could a second series improve on perfection?

Well in just a 10 hour series, DR (Danish Broadcasting Corporation) manages to equal if not surpass their strengths of series 1. Again we meet Sarah Lund played to absolute perfection by Sofie Gråbøl. This time Sarah is stationed at Gedser, southern Denmark checking passports. Lennart Brix (Morten Suurballe), Vibeke (Anne Marie Helger) and Mark Lund (Eske Forsting Hansen) are the only other three returning characters from series 1. Troels Hartmann and co are swapped for Thomas Buch and co. Copenhagen municipal politics has now become Danish politics on a national level involving the Prime Minister, Justice and Defence Ministries, alongside the Ministry of Integration, briefly. The Birk Larsens are replaced by the Rabens.

The second series has a much faster pace to it than the first and although there is less exploration of the characters as there was in series 1, this series is no worse for it. Sofie Gråbøl is once again supported by some of Denmark's finest acting talent. Nicolas Bro is outstanding as new Justice Minister Thomas Buch. Ken Vedsegaard is utterly convincing as Jens Peter Raben held in Herstedvester Prison. And as a new sidekick for Lund we have Ulrik Strange played by Mikael Birkkjær. Birkkjær also stars in BBC4's 2012 Danish offering Borgen - Series 1 [DVD] along with a couple of other performers from the earlier series.

Watching a series with subtitles in a minor Scandinavian language does require concentration. Aided by excellent subtitling to help steer you around the twists and turns throughout the 10 episodes, this programme really is a joy to watch.

Why is it that a country of less than six million people can produce such fine quality TV whereas the UK comes up with nothing anywhere near this calibre? If Saturdays at 9pm in the autumn mean I'm a Celebrity, The X Factor or Casualty for you, then The Killing is probably not going to be your cup of tea. With episodes reaching over a million viewers, more than double that of the first series and beating any other foreign language programme by a long way, The Killing proves that decent quality compelling TV does not always originate from the USA or the UK. Episodes aren't 42 minutes long to enable countless ads to be squeezed in. Most episodes are just short of an hour. Each hour spent watching this set will fly by.

You may want to familiarise yourself with a couple of bridges whilst watching the series. The Great Belt Bridge connects two Danish islands Funen and Zealand. The Oresund Bridge connects Danish Zealand with Swedish Skane. Copenhagen, where the main drama unfolds is located on Zealand just over the water from Swedish Malmo on the other side of the Oresund Bridge.

Ever been questioned by the police while in the shower? Well one of the characters in The Killing 2 has Sarah Lund at her best while in the shower. What's a Danish wedding like and will all family members attend? Will Sarah open up to anybody? Find out in this fantastic boxset.

Also included in this boxset is a 19 minute bonus feature on the making of The Killing which has an interview with Sofie and producer Piv Bernth.

Thank you BBC4 for striking gold, Arrow Films for providing the DVD release, DR for making gold, and The Guardian for providing such a worthy accompanying blog to the series.

Enjoy!

Hope that BBC4 screens series 3 as soon as Denmark screen it in late 2012!

And if you need another fix of Sofie and Mikael, have a look at this December 2011 re-release of Aftermath [DVD] in which they star as a married couple. Two other films I recommend for fans of Sofie and Mikael are Sofie's first ever film from 1986 The Wolf at the Door ( Gauguin, le loup dans le soleil ) ( Oviri ) and a 2005 film with Mikael in the lead role Springet, along with Værelse 304 (Room 304) Import (English subtitles)from 2011. Worth a watch!

Ken Vedsegaard plays a main character in the Krøniken series Krøniken (Better Times) Volume 1 (Episodes 1 & 2) (Import) (English Subtitles) set in Copenhagen in the Fifties. Guest stars in the early episodes include Nicolas Bro and from Series 1, Lars Mikkelsen. Seen by around 2.5 million viewers weekly during its initial screening in January 2004. Vedsegaard also appears with Sofie in True Spirit ( Den Rette ånd ).