(The 20 episodes/20 days may have also been a formula from ‘24’, a programme I have never seen).īut all thoughts of televisions formulas and references are soon forgotten, as the drama takes hold. The beginning reminded me of early episodes of ‘Twin Peaks’, and I also thought ‘The West Wing’ may have been an influence, with a number of characters fighting an election in City Hall. It was engrossing from the start, while early impressions hinted at themes from other dramas. (I have since read the jumpers represented both the character’s independence and sense of community spirit. It was too late to catch up on it then, and I stayed away from finding anything else out about it, as I planned to watch it at some point thankfully, BBC4 re-ran all 20 episodes again over four weeks, with the conclusion last night.Īll I knew about it when I settled down to watch the first episode less than a month ago was that it was a Scandinavian series, with a lead character, a detective called Sarah Lund, who wore woolly jumpers.
I became conscious of ‘The Killing’ midway during its first airing in BBC4, mainly because of its mentions on Twitter and in the Radio Times. With 20 episodes and one main plot, it eschewed conventional television rules, while perfectly living up to the billing it gives itself in it’s opening titles – a thriller. While I was watching ‘ Boardwalk Empire’, BBC4 was showing the Danish drama ‘The Killing’ (translated from ‘ Forbrydelsen ’), which did all of the above, and more.
#The killing danish or american serial#
The long-running serial allows multiple-storylines, complex plots, characters to have real depth and personality, as well as a sub-context only previously achieved in great novels.
It was admittedly hard work sitting through episodes I hadn’t recorded, and couldn’t fast forward between the ridiculous amount of ad breaks, but I stuck with it, because the best American drama (such as The Sopranos, The Wire, West Wing, Dexter and Six Feet Under) has shown that television can be a superior medium to cinema. Though it never reached the heights of some of the great American Drama serials of the last fifteen years, it was decent enough television there were strong lead performances from great actors including Steve Bescumi, Kelly McDonald and Michael Shannon, and an opening episode that was easily identifiable as being directed by Martin Scorsese. On the Saturday evenings when I stayed in at the start of the year, I was watching ‘Boardwalk Empire’, on Sky’s newly launched channel Sky Atlantic.
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