Review: The Bridge, BBC4 (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Review: The Bridge, BBC4

4:40pm Friday 4th May 2012 in TV By John Anson, Features editor

JUST when you thought Scandinavian drama couldn’t get any better, along comes The Bridge.

First there was Wallander (not the Kenneth Branagh version), then The Killing and Borgen. But the latest offering is arguably the best so far.

The Bridge doesn’t have any fashionable pieces of knitwear, but it does have one of the most compelling detective double acts for many a long year with the socially-awkward Saga Norén (played by Sofia Helin) and the easy-going Martin Rohde (played by The Killing’s Kim Bodnia).

This week’s offering featured one of the most excruciating scenes male viewers are likely to witness and certainly something no vasectomy patient should ever have to undergo!

After four episodes the plot is already becoming too complicated to explain here.

Suffice to say a serial killer on a mission keeps bumping people off in imaginative ways to make a political point involving both the Swedish and Danish police.

But that’s just a framework for some beautifully scripted — and shot — drama. Sofia Helin is magnificent as the semi autistic detective who is almost machine-like, drives a vintage Porsche 911 and never appears to take off her mobile phone headphones.

It has become almost trendy to celebrate the offerings of our Scandinavian friends but when they produce programmes as good as The Bridge it’s well and truly deserved.

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