“We need to reinvent the way we tell stories. Now we have to do something different to The Killing or Borgen; we need to go down new paths,”
A somewhat controversial quote – made by DR’s Director of Fiction Piv Bernth – to justify the new crime thriller Follow The Money. To many British lovers of Borgen and The Bridge, this statement is no welcome change in programming. The door ajar, DR is welcoming a new ideology to Danish drama TV and perhaps even a lax attitude to it’s synonymous female heroins. Whilst we all realise the importance of the ‘Nordic-Noir’ approach perhaps invented by DR I don’t imagine a total abandonment of the genre.
Follow The Money is a corporate thriller centring around an environmental CEO and a dead body found by one of his windfarms and will feature Dogme 95 veteran actors Thomas Bo Larsen and Nikolaj Lie Kass. It’s not been announced yet when it will air however the planned date is around January 2016.
RUV, a relatively unknown broadcaster outside of Iceland, have developed a new crime/detective series to be shown on BBC4 at the end of this year. Trapped will be directed by Iceland’s top filmmaker Baltasar Kormakur and be set in Iceland after the discovery of a body found in the freezing waters. Kormakur said recently in an interview: “I am looking forward to putting a new spin on the Scandinavian crime genre for audiences around the world…” It will be interesting how successful this series will be especially with it not being released by DR1.
Although Iceland has an everlasting tie with Denmark, the allure of an Icelandic series seems to pique my interest. Not much is known about the series (or not that I can find) so the premise is still rather unknown. However we do see Icelandic-American actor Ólafur Darri Ólafsson star alongside Danish actor Bjarne Henriksen. Hopefully the Icelandic talent of writing and storytelling – originating with the Sagas of the Icelanders 1,000 years ago – will help Kormakur’s series exceed those of it’s Danish cousins.
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