Borgen s1 ep 3; s1 ep 4

It’s now pretty clear that Borgen is going to be a series of largely self-contained episodes; inasmuch as there are longer arcs, they’re in the background for now. That, of course, makes it even more preposterous that the BBC is showing it in double bills, a practice which it tried to justify in the Radio Times this week thusly: “foreign dramas tend to have more episodes” (Borgen has ten), and that “the gripping nature of the storylines also lend themselves to playing more than one episode, with fans eager to find out how the plots will develop”. This second point seems to me to carry an implicit admission that home-grown drama is shit.

A fascinating feature in The Guardian at the weekend looked at DR, Denmark’s public service broadcaster, and creators of Forbrydelsen, Borgen, and Bron/Broen (The Bridge), coming to the BBC after Borgen. Apparently DR’s drama commissioners “insist on original drama dealing with contemporary issues: no remakes, no adaptations”. On Sunday of next week, incidentally, the BBC is showing the second episode of ‘Call the Midwife’, the 1950s-set adaptation of a book by Jennifer Worth. It’s followed by the first episode of Birdsong, an adaptation of Sebastian Faulks’s (rather good) novel about the First World War.

Anyway, to the show. Episode 3 was probably the sort of episode that you like if you like that sort of thing – and I do – as Birgitte tried to wrestle her fragile coalition into approving her budget plans, negotiating at one point over the building of a motorway to bring two backwoods members of parliament into line. Meantime former rival Laugesen has re-emerged as a tabloid editor. Birgitte is feeling the absence of a spin-doctor, so appoints the donnish Tore – he’s a professor of rhetoric, you know – who of course gets filleted on live TV by the streetfighting Laugesen. All very West Wing, this, particularly for those of us who have fond memories of Josh Lyman, the press briefing, and the secret plan to fight inflation. There’s only one way this can end, and it’s with the return of Kasper. Slightly more worrying are the first hints that the First Marriage is under strain. Look: I know why they’re doing it – it’s a TV drama with a married couple, which means that the marriage has to hit trouble – but its inevitability doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Episode 4, however, was the real cracker out of this pair. The increasingly interesting Katrine is given leaked information suggesting that the CIA is using Greenland as a base for the transportation of illegally-held prisoners. Birgitte is obliged first to host Greenland’s Inuit prime minister, who looks about 15, then to visit him in Nuuk. Meantime the defence minister, our old friend Theis Birk Larsen (Bjarne Henriksen, looking like a cross between Martin McGuinness and Harry Secombe) goes on TV to try and explain his way out of that one. It gives Birgitte a crash-course in realpolitik, particularly when her permanent secretary Niels Eric is prowling around, dropping heavy hints that the source of the leaks is something that’s being taken care of. Katrine has her own battles to fight as well, with governmental pressure being brought to bear on the newsroom. It’s salutary to be reminded that many countries have to grapple with the legacy of colonialism and the influence of American foreign policy, and stirring journalistic ethics into this made for an absolutely terrific episode.