By Jen Lavery
With just two episodes of Scandinavian crime drama The Bridge left to go, it’s been an at times gruesome race against the clock for our Swedish/Danish detective duo to stop a crazed killer with a chip on his shoulder.
So far, the whole ‘stopping him’ part hasn’t gone massively well.
A politician, a prostitute, a psychologist, eleven homeless people, a runaway teenager, a police officer and a journalist have met with a plethora of ways to die including poisoning, shooting, stabbing, live webcam blood-draining and the ever-popular steering-wheel-gas-attack.
The only ones to survive have been five kidnapped children, for the simple reason that really small kids never seem to die on TV, though Saga and Martin’s conversation about why the threats against ‘small people’ weren’t the worst thing the killer had done was certainly a little unusual.
Ah, yes, Saga. While there have been a multitude of articles about how fantastic it is to see yet another strong, female lead on our screens, allow me to hitch up my dainty little skirts and… well, you can probably guess what comes next.
In what’s becoming a bit of a tradition with our new generation of ‘strong female leads’, Saga likes to do a bit of the sex, without the worry of any commitment. Or dates. Or memorable names. Which when taken at face value, is fine. “Go girl”, etc.
However, as with Claire Danes character in Homeland, this is connected by the script-writers to her (in Saga’s case undefined) personality disorder, the basic idea behind this being that women who can enjoy sex without an emotional attachment are in some way abnormal.
But, at least with Saga (compared to Danes’ Agent Mathison and Sofie Gråbøl’s Sarah Lund of The Killing and knitwear fame, whose personality disorder could be that she doesn’t actually have one) we get the odd crushingly awkward moment, for example her attempt to join in with a bit of casual office banter:
“I got my period this morning.”
Er, thanks.
In tribute to Saga’s say-what-you-want-and-damn-the-consequences mentality, I now present my top five list of people the killer might be. I know! Given that we have only two episodes to go and the police are now focused on a new suspect, ex-police officer Jens (awesome name), who has (in another Homeland style move) avoided suspicion by being all dead and that, this is massively unnecessary. But I’m pressing on. Why? Cos I play by my own rules, baby.
IT’S THE OTHER JOURNALIST DUDE – Why? Cos I can’t imagine anyone spending lots of time with Daniel Ferbe and wanting to be his friend more than they want to plant killer devices in his car. (Plus, he did make some comment to Daniel about him having ‘learned nothing’ right before his people carrier got all ‘death-fart’ on him.)
IT’S ANTON, THE RANDOM DUDE SAGA HAS BEEN HAVING RANDOM SEX WITH – Why? Cos this is telly and outside of romantic comedies, sex with random dudes NEVER ends well. One way or another, I don’t fancy his chances of surviving past episode ten.
IT’S FRIDA, THE CHICK AUGUST HAS BEEN TALKING TO ONLINE – Why? Cos we’ve been told she’s his ex-girlfriend and while that may be true, for some reason we seem to be seeing an awful lot of the chat going on between them. And you never know who’s really behind a computer screen, eh, middle-class parent demographic?
IT’S STEFAN LINDBERG – Why? Because he has been sent forward in time from a Swedish version of The Sweeney to iron the scum off the streets.
IT’S CHARLOTTE AND HER SCARY WIG – Why? Cos why the feck is she wearing a wig when she has hair underneath? WHY? She looks like Bleached Bone Barbie.
SLUTET | UDGANGEN
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The Bridge is on Saturdays at 9pm on BBC4. You can catch up on iPlayer here
I’ve been putting my money on the online “girlfriend” since day one.
BTW, Hilary, your pieces always give me a good giggle.
Hey fella,
Thanks very much, but all credit needs to go to Jen, who actually wrote this article. Due to a technical hiccup, I had to post as me. She’s @jenniferlavery on Twitter and well worth a follow x
Hi, now that the series is finished and we know who done whut and all, I thought I’d weigh in with a comment on Stefan Lindberg and his distinctive 70s look.
*spoilers below*
Anyone who hasn’t watched the last episodes yet may want to not read this.
I don’t know if this is correct, it is only my own conjecture. I am Swedish and about Stefan’s age. Possibly, I’m a couple of years younger than he is supposed to be, though the actor is probably younger than me.
During the 70s and early 80s, Sweden as a society was very preoccupied with the meme of “solidarity”. This was reflected in politics and in everyday life and as someone who grew up in this and then had to live my teen to young adult years through the neo-liberal agenda that took hold in the nineties and now is the ruling ideology in Sweden since 2006 (although the previous, supposedly social democrat, government certainly did not shy away from selling out infrastructure and public conveniences, letting the business interests keep the profits while the tax payers footed the costs) I am sympathetic to Stefan who comes off as what we, in Sweden, call “A concrete social democrat”. I.e a social democrat who did not sell out during the nineties and still has the ideals of solidarity and altruism. This would make Stefan, literally AND figuratively a red (read: socialist) herring.
At the same time, in a less politically motivated identity move – Stefan is the father he didn’t have. He was failed by every single adult during his childhood and now he not only acts the parent to everyone he meets – he also looks exactly like a Swedish dad would in 1978. All that beige and those whiskers. That’s certainly what my dad looked like in 1978. Stefan is the dad he always wanted. Down to being willing to kill to protect his “children”.
That’s my interpretation. It may well be incredibly wrong.