The ever-popular Borgen aired its fourth series on Netflix in 2022 after a ten-year hiatus, with the global streaming giant having joined up with national broadcaster DR to give the political drama a much-anticipated comeback.
Borgen got a fourth series on an international streaming platform for a reason, as it is highly popular outside of Denmark. But if you want to explore the world of Danish series further, we have some suggestions.
Kastanjemanden (The Chestnut Man)
A Danish crime series based on the book of the same name by Søren Sveistrup, Kastanjemanden takes its title from a children’s rhyme, which is given a chilling makeover and forms a motif in the series.
Detective Naia Thulin (Danica Curcic) and her reluctant new partner, Mark Hess (Mikkel Boe Følsgaard) investigate the murders of several women involving a mysterious chestnut figure left at the crime scenes.
The six-part series was released on Netflix in 2021, to very good reviews. Described as “gripping” and “gruesome,” it’s classic Nordic-Noir successfully released on streaming. If you like DR’s The Killing and The Bridge, you’ll probably like this. Be prepared to be sitting on the edge of the sofa.
READ ALSO: Danish TV: The best shows to watch to understand Danish society
Equinox
The six-part supernatural thriller from 2020 is full of suspense and mystery but may leave you with questions at the end.
It centres around a group of students celebrating their school graduation on a party bus (studenterkørsel) – a familiar summer sight in Denmark. But that’s where the familiarity ends, as mystery ensues when most of the students on the bus disappear.
Nine-year old Astrid’s (also played by Curcic) older sister Ida is one of the students who goes missing and the series follows Astrid’s attempts, as an adult, to investigate what happened in 1999.
Mixing folklore, imagination and reality, with a modern setting, it’s been described as “a cross between Stranger Things, Midsommar, minus the horror, and the French series The Returned.”
The Rain
This is a dramatic post-apocalyptic series in which most of the population in Scandinavia is mysteriously wiped out by something carried in raindrops.
Led to safety by their scientist father, two young siblings (Alba August and Lucas Lynggaard Tønnesen) shield themselves in a bunker for six years but their father doesn’t return to them. They finally emerge and join a group of other survivors (led by Følsgaard, who like Curcic is a Danish Netflix regular) to search across Denmark and Sweden for their father and a cure for the lethal rain.
It has some spectacular visuals, notably of a post-apocalyptic central Copenhagen. Fans of dystopian fiction and Denmark might therefore find it appealing.
However, viewers should be prepared to endure some Amager-sized plot holes, contrived behaviour by characters and dangerous scenarios which could have been avoided if someone had just asked what seemed like a very obvious question five minutes earlier.
Despite this, the Guardian gave it a four-star review and said, “this tale of environmental disaster is about more than survival – it questions the very nature of humanity.”
Three series ran from 2018 to 2020 and are all available on Netflix.
READ MORE: Six weird and wonderful Danish film title translations
Rita
Rita is the name of the main character in this Danish comedy-drama. She is an unconventional chain-smoking teacher and single mum of three, who fiercely protects her students and pretty much does and says as she wants. Often wearing a leather jacket and giving an air of a teacher who doesn’t have rules, her pupils love her. But she often comes up against problems of her own, particularly when it comes to adults and her own three children.
The show is not only popular in Denmark but internationally, as it reflects progressive Scandinavian values, with gritty plot lines covered in a funny way.
Filmed in Rødøvre, Copenhagen, the series first aired on TV2 but then moved to Netflix who co-produced the last three seasons. There are 40 episodes over five seasons. It ran from 2012 to 2020. Dutch and French versions have also been produced.
Chosen
A Sci-fi mystery coming-of-age series that mixes Danish crime with the sci-fi genre.
Set in the fictitious Danish town of Middelbo, the series centres on 17-year old Emma. She discovers that her town, which was known to have once been hit my a meteor, isn’t what she thought it was.
Although Middelbo isn’t real, it reflects a typical quiet rural Danish town, although most of the series was filmed in and around Copenhagen.
The six-part series aired in January 2022 and was created by the same people behind The Rain – Christian Potalivo and Jannik Tai Mosholt.
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