Television

 

I'm a member of a cult

 

Andrew Hook

 

Cult detective with Fair Isle

I'm a member of a cult. Unwittingly of course. Because I've always thought of cults as very bad things. People sitting on a peak in Darien, waiting for the world to come to an end at the appointed hour. (I always wonder what they say to each other when the time has come and gone and nothing has happened.) Or more horrifically I remember Jonestown in Guyana in 1978 and the murder/suicide of 900 ordinary Americans, members of the so-called People's Temple. Or the Moonies and their mass marriages. Or Scientology. Or many, many more.
     But of course the cult I'm a member of is something entirely different. Seven weeks ago I was at home on a Saturday night casually checking on what the television had to offer in the way of entertainment. I belong to the generation that used to have at most four TV channels to choose from, and when all programme-makers regarded the Saturday night audience as looking for the lightest of light entertainment. So my expectations were not high.
     But something on BBC4 caught my eye: the first episode of a Danish detective mystery called 'The Killing'. Danish? A Danish thriller? Surely not I thought. But then I remembered that Copenhagen is only a bridge away from Sweden and illumination blazed in. Everyone knows that in the last few years Scandinavian writers have become top of the pops in the genre of detective fiction.
     Ten years ago a departmental colleague recommended to me the Wallender novels of Henning Mankell, so more recently I've been able to look on with a sense of knowing superiority at their growing popularity, and the huge success of the TV adaptations including the BBC’s version with Kenneth Branagh as Wallender.

 

     Then came the quite extraordinary worldwide success of the Stieg Larrson trilogy 'Millennium'. The character of Wallender has much in common with that of Ian Rankin's Rebus. But neither Mankell nor Rankin had been able to create a female character as intriguing as Larsson's Lisbeth Salander. More recently still, Norway has enlisted in this Scandinavian takeover with the crime novels of Jo Nesbo taking their place in the bestsellers' list.
     Given all this, I thought, why shouldn’t BBC4 have reasonably decided that Denmark had something good to offer? So I settled down to watch. And I was right to do so. 'The Killing' is great television. The format is unusual. At 9 and 10 o'clock BBC4 shows two consecutive episodes of the programme. So next Saturday episodes 15 and 16 – out of 20 in total – will be broadcast. Twenty hours devoted to the investigation of a single crime: the kidnap, rape and murder of an adolescent girl. At this stage who who can say what one's final verdict will be? But its power to grip is beyond question. Obviously it moves slowly, but it's all the more realistic as a result. Avenues of investigation open up, and a result seems close. But then some detail emerges which means that we are back where we started.
     The city of Copenhagen – particularly Copenhagen at night – is a sombre presence. City politics, at first only on the fringe of the action, slowly move closer and closer to the centre of the intrigue. The characters, and the tension between them, are beautifully realised. What seems to be happening is that the violence of the original crime has set in motion a cycle of failure and disintegration in the lives of all of those touched by it: the politicians, the police investigators, the victim’s friends, the stricken family members. Will any of them be able to put their lives back on track? We’ll have to wait and see.
     In any event, the media is now reporting that ‘The Killing’ has become cult viewing. We band of viewers, however small, have become the latest cultural elite. And despite the fact that I'm not particularly intrigued by Sarah Lund's Fair Isle jumper, this is a cult of which I'm pleased to be a member. Why not join it?

Andrew Hook is a former professor of English literature at
Glasgow University

 

SR endorses Andrew Hook's view of this brilliant series. You can still catch up on all the earlier episodes on BBC iPlayer – Ed