I counted, and it was a whole 12 minutes before Sarah Lund's torch came out this week. But there it was, with Lund once again deserted, cut off from her support unit, by a perpetrator cleverer than the Danish police. Don't they ever learn?
This week's English words: routine check, kidnapping, private, school.
The few critics accusing this series of 'The Killing' of being too slow would have had to eat their words after the first 20 minutes, which were incredibly tense, and sad.
The seemingly tragic events created an episode of self-beration, with everyone from Borch to Zeuthen to the Prime Minister all beating themselves up, and even Lund having a little weep.
Is Borch (right) the man to take Sarah Lund's mind off the job?
However, plot developments soon found a way out of all this chest-beating. Evidence surfaced that the Justice Minister had been conducting strange meetings with familiar faces, while Lund followed one of her haughty hunches to "speak to a teacher"... in a deserted school, with an open door and a flickering light at midnight. Netball club, anyone?
Meanwhile, in personal life news, Lund's daughter-in-law was attempting a spot of family bonding, lugging poor Lund with her for her pre-natal scan. The poor girl obviously hadn't spotted what jumper our tireless detective was sporting, it was the work-through-the-night-and-let-pot-plants-die one. Unborn grandchildren will have to wait.
Borch was having even less luck, despite rekindling Lund's student-era passion. When she asked him during that awkward day after, "Where does that road lead?" he could have been forgiven for making pot plant plans for their life together. But this was Sarah Lund, nothing if not literal. So that road literally took them to a disused shipyard where, joy of joys, she could get her torch back out. He obviously hadn't spotted the jumper, either.
Factoid... Copenhagen has seen a 149% increase in web searches for hotel bookings since the start of this final series of 'The Killing'. Hotel booking site Hotels.com reports that the Danish travel market is enjoying the same boost enjoyed by Faroesque jumpers and Scandinavian crime fiction, and is responding to "the Lund effect" with offers of tailor-made tours around key locations including the harbour (washed up body), Parliament (fictional corruption) and surrounding woodland. In the best traditions, you should probably consider taking a torch.
