This show got great press when it came out on BBC4 some years back; seemingly feeding the desire for more great Danish drama for those fans of The Killing and the like. As such, although I was slow to take it up, I did assume it would be something of high quality set in the world of politics. Expecting something complex, weighty and engaging, I was sure to concentrate on the characters so I could be sure to keep up with it, and as such I was pretty surprised by the sheer pace of the first half of the season, as characters come and go in a blink of an eye and everything moves so quickly.
The feeling is one of superficiality and, although the energy it has keeps you watching, it was clear this is not what I expected it to be. Accordingly I put my assumptions to one side and instead started to watch the show on its terms. It seems to move from this rapid setting up of the idealistic politician Birgitte Nyborg, into more of a West Wing mould where she has to deal with situations that are difficult and does so in a very Bartlett-esque way. This stage of the season I started to see as a bill dull and repetitive. I understood the point was to show the effects of power and the difficult decisions, but it seemed like simple moralizing and all very liberal in its content (and I say that as a liberal myself). Throughout these two sections of the season, the content varies wildly in tone too; there is comedy, darker moments, and just generally simple basic stuff that moves too fast and does not have time to bed into the narrative. It also asks a lot of the audience to care about the characters, while also doing little of depth to help us do so – instead it just throws character story-arcs at us assuming we'll buy into it.
The final few episodes settle down into something more interesting. The pace slows and things are allowed to maybe sink in a little bit, and I thought I saw potential for it to be more serious and to have a darker edge to it. It still had problems with the writing and it still seemed too broad and unfocused in ways, but there was some sort of general turning of the ship to sail in a specific direction. Certainly it was enough for me to think that I would probably return for the second season to see what they do with the show from here, albeit that I would do so with a certain amount of tentativeness.
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