Why 'The Killing' Works (Even Though It Shouldn't)

We're probably the last people in Britain to watch the Danish cop thriller, The Killing - and we've been as hooked on it as everybody else. It's got a crack-like narrative drive, which is slightly reminiscent of 24. In fact, with its 200-day high concept structure, its rather like 24 as remade by Lars von Trier. It really is very bleak.

What's striking about how well it works is how much is wrong with it. I don't mean this as an insult. One of my favourite sayings is Randall Jarrell's definition of a novel: 'a prose narrative of some length that has something wrong with it.' I think what he meant is that once you get beyond a miniature work like a lyric poem or a short song, all your choices imply things that you are choosing not to do. 

I'm just going to jot down a few random flaws that struck me as I watched it and then the virtues that outweigh them (by the way, this means that the following is FULL OF SPOILERS - and The Killing is really not something you want to watch if you've been told who did it):

1) In order to sustain tension over twenty separate episodes characters are constantly having to withhold information simply to tantalize the viewer. A blatant example is the Muslim teacher, Rama, who is the first significant suspect. He has a perfectly good alibi which (for an extremely implausible reason) he doesn't reveal, even to his own wife, while he is driven out of his job, beaten up, vilified in the media. If only he'd revealed it before...well, they'd have lost about four episodes.

2) Before I get on to why Sarah Lund is a wonderful character, it should be said that she is the world's worse detective. She conducts her investigation like a toddler with Attention-Deficit Disorder. Every time she suspects someone of the crime, she doesn't just investigate, but accuses them and broadcasts her suspicions. This clumsiness repeatedly tips off the real killer while causing at least two deaths of innocent people, ruining careers, breaking up relationships. I thought this aspect of her non-professionalism would be dealt with, but it never really was.

3) I know that the detective who wrecks their own personal life is a staple of the genre but Sarah Lund's utter hopelessness as mother, daughter, fiancee, ex-wife, friend, colleague (and any other relationship I've forgotten about) really bordered on the comical. 

4) A danger of a 20-part thriller is that ideas are raised and then dropped, or half-dropped. For example, a powerful early moment is when Lund's Swedish boyfriend (a forensic psychologist) looks at the file and announces that this is the work of someone who has done this before. But when, in the final moments of the final episode, we learn of how the murder was actually committed (ie the murderer couldn't bear to actually do the murder himself), this makes no sense. The murderer seemed to have two different kinds of motivation that didn't fit together.

5) And then there were other random questions: why was there so much blood in the Party flat (it looked like the aftermath of the Manson murders) when we later learned she was kept in another house overnight and then taken to the forest, where she was still strong enough to escape - albeit temporarily.

6) And maybe I missed something, but what was the role of the cabdriver/removal man? Why did he flee? Why did he kill himself? 

7) Nicci disagrees with me about this, but I felt the whole political plot and the whole school plot was too much of a cross between a red herring and a shaggy dog story. Compare it (very unfairly, since it's the best thriller that's ever been on TV) with Edge of Darkness. Unlike Troy Kennedy Martin's masterpiece, but very like 24, this isn't a series you could watch again.

However, and this is a big however, The Killing was an extraordinary achievement, and sustained itself amazingly well over twenty episodes. Because:

1) It was superbly cast and acted. Sofie Grabol's Sarah Lund is as remarkable as everyone says she is. I found even the way she chewed gum weirdly compelling (but she or the director must have got tired of it because she stopped doing it in the later episodes). And she had an intriguing, flickering smile when she interviewed suspects which made her hard to read. But she didn't stand out, the way Hugh Laurie does in House or Kiefer Sutherland did in 24. All the characters were given their due. 

2) More than that, it is almost startling to see a drama that is about middle-age people. More than that, middle-aged people with middle-age faces. Compare Sofie Grabol or Anne Eleonora Jorgenson (as the victim's mother) with their US equivalents. It reminds me of a line of dialogue in a Steve Martin movie: 'You're breasts feel strange.' 'That's because they're real.'

3) The grim, almost nightmarish portrayal of Copenhagen, which surely won't do much for Danish tourism. It was claustrophobic, lowering, grubby, sordid - but in a good way.

4) And accompanying this was a grim society - of drug takers, sexual exploiters, corrupt politicians, ruthless politicians, corrupt and ruthless politicians ex-criminals, depressives, liars - in which you believed that any of them, even the women, could have participated in the rape and murder of an innocent young woman.

5) They stolen ideas from the right places. The political intrigue was pure Michael Corleone (in the final episode I expected people to kiss his hand and call him Godfather). The mini-thriller style of each episode was effectively lifted from 24. (Each episode of 24 is full of lines like, 'I want the money within the hour'; this was full of lines like, 'I'll meet him this evening'.)

6) I know we're supposed to like our thrillers dark, but, God, they had the courage to make every single character unsympathetic. Except for Lund's poor partner, Meyer. 

7) And the music was great.

The Killing is like a roller coaster ride. It picks you up, drags you along a hair-raise set of curves and loops and tosses you out the other end thinking to yourself 'Wow!' and then, 'hang on a minute...' Still, does anyone know when series two comes out?