Well, in two short hours, 'The Bridge' successfully turned everything we'd assumed on its head, with this series now proving it has more than Martin's absence to set it apart from its predecessors.
READ MORE:
First, the crime… the latest theory being bandied around was that the murders were all based on works of art owned by Freddie Holst, a man strangely connected to just about everybody both sides of the Oresund that we've already encountered, AND serves as a figurehead for all that is wrong with asset-stripping capitalism. Nobody does the personal/political like The Bridge writer Hans Rosenfeldt.
The mystery behind Henrik's personal circumstances was finally revealed to us
We're halfway through this series now, and still Hans is adding fresh characters to the mix. We learned more about the urbane self-helper Claes, a man who had the bad luck to give his dead father over to his stalker, Annika, who just happened to be a funeral director who liked poking about in her clients' mouths. What are the chances? And that was before she got a bit rabid at the sight of Claes self-helping his way back into his ex-wife's affections.
And there's another fine-boned blonde warrior in town, with journalist Tina fielding death threats for her paparazzi part in exposing Anna and Benjamin's affair, and she just happens to be hanging out with Saga's colleague John. The other thing we know is that, despite being part of the media, she seems to have a bubbling conscience - something tells me she'll be featuring large in the final episodes.
But these developments were just the side menu in this extremely disconcerting double bill, where human relationships came to the fore, and our preconceptions were thoroughly inverted.
First, Anna's entanglements took a double blow. First, her young lover Benjamin exited the scene via a bloody bath, then her husband Håkan, whom I'd actually pegged for villainy, found himself wriggling in a barrel, and not in a good way.
In a plot string not yet linked to the crime but surely brewing, we learned that Jeanette's baby bump was a surrogate arrangement for rich Freddie (yes, the same Freddie) and his wife, leading us to the creepy vision of him stroking Jeanette's real bump in the nursery, while wifey nursed her plastic bump in the living room. As with Anna and Benjamin, I fear this can't end well, although I did enjoy hearing Freddie having to dip into the English language to accuse his wife of giving him the "silent treatment" - don't they have that in Denmark?
Freddie's secret arrangement with his wife Asa is just another thread in this labrynthine tale
Back at base, Saga had another bad day, this time with the sudden departure of her mother, and a secret internal investigation into her business, which has a touch of the 'Luther' about it. More poignantly, her confusion over the fate of her boss Hans has been tempered by her unconventional but blossoming partnership with Henrik, whose home life was explained in a manner both surprising, and surprisingly moving.
So we have social commentary, a labyrinthine investigation and a whole load of striking personal drama - is there anything else as bewildering, challenging and affecting as 'The Bridge' currently on TV? Only four episodes to go now - savour them we must.
