When writing Nordic Noir, I took another look at The Bridge. If the British taste for dramatised Scandinavian crime was piqued by The Killing, to a large degree, the momentum of this UK enthusiasm was maintained with a later cult series. Björn Stein’s The Bridge may not have attained the heights of its predecessor, but acquired a dedicated following, not least for its infuriating but likable sociopathic heroine. The series, with one caveat, is one of the quirkiest and most intriguing entries in the field, utilising familiar themes but giving them an idiosyncratic twist. A body is discovered on the Oresund bridge between Sweden and Denmark (two bodies, in fact – in gruesome fashion, the torso and legs belong to different victims) and the ill-assorted female/male cop duo with equal jurisdiction obliged to work together on the case (one Swedish, one Danish) are wonderfully played by Sofia Helin and Kim Bodnia. Helin’s eccentric Saga Norén certainly possessed the capacity to become as much of a cult figure as The Killing’s Sara Lund – though she takes the latter’s lack of interpersonal skills to almost cosmic levels, sporting a hilarious inability to relate to other human beings; in this area, she makes Lisbeth Salander looked like an agony aunt. Saga, for instance, takes Erica Jong’s conception of the ‘zipless fuck’ to hilarious levels – sex for her is an itch that simply needs to be occasionally scratched, with zero emotional commitment. There are a slew of mystifying plot strands thrown up in the early episodes which will kept viewers comprehensively hooked – for instance, who was the scarred, half-dressed homeless girl who is poisoned in the second episode? Sofia Helin, an actress whose own slight facial scarring points up her own powerful appeal balance the schizophrenic elements of her character with total understanding, while Kim Bodnia – functioning as the viewer’s eyes (though which we review his eccentric partner) Language and communication are central here, embodied in the protagonists with Swedish/Danish culture clash which was in a incidental element in The Killing moved to more prominent position.
Although when I spoke to Kim Bodnia about the success of The Bridge he said he’d asked for the scenes showing miscommunication and irony between Denmark and Sweden to be cut down.
