Almost a decade after Scandi noir or Nordic noir had migrated from books to TV screen, I happened to watch of one the flagship TV shows of the genre - Bron | Broen or The Bridge. The bridge stands for the Øresund Bridge across Øresund strait that connects the southern Swedish town of Malmo to the Danish capital - Copenhagen. The crime that starts off season 1 of Bron | Broen leaves it dead body straddling the Swedish-Danish border passing through middle of Øresund bridge.
The long and looming, sometimes foreboding Bridge is an omnipresent character in the series. It is a team of two detectives, a Swedish and a Danish one who are given the responsibility to investigate this cross-border dead body / crime. Sofia Helin headlines as the Asperger-y Swedish cop - Saga Noren and the Danish side is represented by the warm and affable, Martin Rohde played by Kim Bodnia. They make an unlikely pair who hit off despite the odds.
Considering the geographical proximity and the cultural overlap of Sweden and Denmark across the strait, the series must have surely explored and presented nuances and references pertaining to the people of the region. Not being very much familiar to the place or the culture except the civil engineering marvel of Øresund bridge, all that was lost on me.
But the one thing that was not unfathomable is the brooding overcast geography and how it influences the people and their behavior in nordic climate. A third of my life was spent north of the 45th parallel in the snowy gray northern lands. My affinity towards Nordic crime dramas is natural. The landscape and the weather are familiar, the IKEA-ish interiors not so much - but that's okay, mega IKEA box stores are working hard at converting the interior-scape on this side of the Atlantic too. As soon as IKEA introduces two-day shipping to Alaska we will be brewing our own home-grown noir in our northern country.
The other attraction for me is the prominent presence of strong, unconventional women protagonists in Nordic noir, starting with Stieg Larsen's Lisbeth Salander aka The Girl with Dragon Tattoo in the 2000s to Bron | Broen's Saga Noren. While Bron | Boren is an engaging crime drama, that evolves into a better version of itself each passing season, I am not really convinced about the way the creators have coached Sofia Helin to play a detective on the spectrum. Then again most characters on the autistic spectrum on TV are stereo-typical, with certain traits exaggerated - the way the majority neurotypical society perceives how a person with Asperger's syndrome should be. As they say once you meet an autistic person, you know one autistic person. Helin's Saga Noren is probably one of the better depictions out there, because I know, I tried watching the U.S version of Bron | Broen.
Bron | Broen inspired a series of remakes the world over in various languages including a U.S one on FX called The Bridge and a French version called The Tunnel. There are also three other remakes take place at the borders of Estonia / Russia, Malaysia / Singapore and Germany / Austria. I almost started watching the U.S one by accident, then I was warned by a concerned loved one to stay clear of it. I am glad such people exist in my life.
But after finishing Season 1 of Bron | Broen, my curiosity got better of me and I sneaked in a fast forwarded S1E1 of the US series. OMG - it was like I had averted a major catastrophe. It was a let down on all fronts. The Hollywoodization of the show made sure that the direction, screenplay, casting and acting went out of the window. 120 lb, 5' 7" waif like Diane Kruger guarding the El Paso-Jaurez Bridge of the Americas against drug lords, coyotes and ICE, sauntering into mob bosses' dens in the middle of the night without backup? Gimme a break. On top of it - a police officer with Asperger's syndrome wearing make-up? I am so done. I like Damian Bichir, but the dialogs and the hamming of other actors were so over the top that Bichir's natural style looked out of place.
I am half way past Season 3. Kim Bodnia said goodbye to the series after season 2 (the rumor was the presence of anti-Semitic elements at the main shooting location of Malmo) and in comes as Saga Noren's Danish counterpart a much younger Thure Lindhart playing detective Henrik Sabroe. He is another broken character like Saga Noren. I have one more season to go after this, we will see how that goes.
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