More bridges everywhere

Not that I liked The Bridge, as some of you might recall. But I was quite interested to read that they are making more bridges. And I don’t mean the second season, which you are probably already waiting for.

What is happening is they are making other versions of The Bridge. A bit like they did with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, where the Americans either felt they could do better, or that the world needed an English speaking version. But in this instance it’s the same people (i.e. the SweDanes) who are making the alternatives as well.

There will be an American ‘Bridge’ – naturally – set on the Mexican border. Another will be British/French, complete with corpse of politician in the Channel tunnel. That one will feature people trying to enter the UK, while the US version will cover drugs and trafficking and things.

They have kept some of the characters, and changed others for what will work better in the respective countries.

I will sit back and await the verdict on these new ‘bridges.’

Arne Dahl

Perkele, that was bad.

Besides, why would one want a television programme/series/show whatever named after the author? ‘Hey, want to watch Henning Mankell tonight?’ That could lead to misunderstandings.

Not only was it bad and embarrassing, but we never got to the end. BBC4 didn’t say how many episodes, but we saw 90 minutes of it, and IMDb says it’s a 180 minutes long film. So ‘just’ one more Saturday? Can we take it, or do we leave ourselves ignorant of what the Russian mafia did?

Took a strong dislike to Paul Hjelm; both the role and the actor. The boss lady was reasonably brisk, and the ‘Finn’ was fun. Calling your children by number is efficient, although leaving one behind on the pavement less so.

But honestly. This left me ashamed to be Swedish. If you’re seeing red, that will be my cheeks.

Shetland

I suppose Shetland is about as Nordic as you get while staying in Britain. If the Shetlanders do feel British? The dramatisation of the Shetland Quartet crime novels by Ann Cleeves was quite enjoyable. Could have been better, but I am not saying there’s anything the matter with Ann’s novels. I’ve not read them, but have heard good things about them.

We’ve been spoilt with gritty and dark Nordic crime series. This wasn’t dark enough, and I’m talking daylight hours. If it was set in January, I have to say it was jolly light outside at most times, but especially so after nine at night. But they needed Up Helly Aa for the plot, so could hardly move it to June.

But then, it’s only me being picky.

While I’m picking, subtitles would have been more than welcome. I had trouble understanding people when I visited Shetland, many years ago. I got no better at understanding them this weekend. Had trouble with the plot, as well, but then this kind of thing might suffer when you only have two hours at your disposal. Twenty hours, or even ten, leaves room for all that lovely Danish grit.

He had the jumper for it, though, did Jimmy Perez. Not the looks for a Perez, however, according to someone who knows. I found it refreshing to see so many unknown actors at work. Sometimes too many stars can be a mistake.

Here the landscape was the star. They’d be inundated with tourists after this, were it not for the fact that you either get seasick expensively, or fly tiny planes equally expensively.

Puzzled by Berglund. Was he supposed to be Swedish? The Swedes were amply represented by Tosh’s Fjällräven jacket.

I wonder if there will be more? Shetland, I mean. Not so much the jackets, or even the jumpers.

How right I was

Forty minutes before the start of the last two episodes of The Killing, Son arrived back home. What did I do? Gave him dinner and then abandoned him while we watched.  I mean, you can’t just not watch something like that, can you? You’d not know what the rest of the country knew. You’d be an outsider.

Is it too cheap to say I told you so? I couldn’t actually work out how or why the character I pointed my finger at after the first Saturday of The Killing III could be ‘the one,’ but I was right. What we didn’t know at the time was that the last season of Forbrydelsen would be about two crimes. Not just the one at the beginning.

But then we suspected the murderer in season one as well, only felt they seemed too obvious. But with enough (red) herring(s) in-between, anyone can be guilty of almost anything. It was a very small cast, when all’s said and done. If the police didn’t do it and the politicians didn’t, there wasn’t a lot of choice left.

The Prime Minister and the company director both showed a surprising amount of backbone; until they didn’t, at the very end. Although I suppose it was to their credit they went as far as they did.

The Killing couldn’t end happily. It would have meant letting the fans down. I’m guessing those who have been disappointed were all set for happily ever after, and upset it didn’t happen. I’m quite satisfied, in a funny way.

Forbrydelsen III

For helvede, that was no shipmate. Ship’s mate, unless he was the first mate, which he could have been on the grounds of being the only one. But that might make him mate only. It’s just a space and an apostrophe, but we need to raise the poor man from shipmate status.

Sorry for being picky, but it grated.

The country has been on tenterhooks for The Killing, the final outing for Sarah Lund. The Guardian gave lessons in Danish. Sort of. Facebook friends foamed at the mouth. Daughter fumed more than foamed, because BBC4 fell short of her northern outpost, and there will have to be complaints.

The long wait was just about worth it. Nice to settle in to a surly and confused detective again, and because Sarah has a tendency to lose her partners, there is a certain freshness in having a new one each season. Two new men, actually. The younger one, Asbjørn, looked a lot like poor Meyer, I thought. Borch, on the other hand, seems quite bossy.

We got so much politics that every once in a while I thought I was watching Borgen, while having trouble deciding which party is which. If I was Prime Minister, which I’m not, I’d be more wary of her in the Centre party.*

Everyone ought to have a bike parked in their posh hallways. And you would have thought they thought they were in Switzerland, displaying such expectations of trains and buses running on time.

And Sarah’s mother… She’s so very Danish.

Here’s to next week! (Please let it be a shorter week, this time.)

*My money is on the chap on the far right of the photo. Far too many fingers in too many pies.

Henderson’s

It looked good, Henderson’s Bistro. And it was conveniently placed for anyone already at the Albert Halls in Stirling for the Bloody Scotland book festival. The menu was OK (for me, not for my companion) and the tables and chairs looked nice enough.

But – and there has to be a but – they let themselves down. To me it wasn’t all that obvious I’d want lunch at 3.30 in the afternoon, and despite us saying we’d come for afternoon tea, we were told what the soup of the day was.

That’s once we’d actually sat down, and that took time. There were several free tables, but they needed to clear one for us, and I hope it’s because they felt it was a nicer table. Why did they need to clear it just then, when the place was already quiet? And why so slowly? Once we were seated we worried in case we were never going to see a menu.

The warm scone arrived well before the pot of tea. Very weak tea. Not terribly warm, either. And I was once more made to feel inferior for wanting milk with Earl Grey. The glass of water we asked for didn’t arrive until we reminded them. When a friend joined us, it took a long time for them to notice. Actually, they didn’t. They had to be hailed.

As for paying, that didn’t look like it would happen soon enough for me to get back to my event on time. Our server was gone, and the next waitress could find no evidence of what we’d had.

On the plus side, we sat comfortably for the free hour we had at our disposal, and it was good to meet up with a friend with no dashing all over town.

Concert for Utøya

Let’s hope the presence of so many new-Norwegians on the stage felt like a kick in the face of the man behind the atrocities in Oslo and on Utøya last year. Yesterday’s concert in remembrance of those who died was attended by many thousands of people, standing outside the Oslo Town Hall in the rain, holding their red roses high.

Presented by Haddy N’jie we got ninety minutes of songs and readings by many of Norway’s finest. Authors Frode Grytten, Karl Ove Knausgård and Åsne Seierstad had all written new pieces specially for the occasion. Crown Prince Haakon was there, and his Prime Minister made a good speech, urging everyone to honour the dead by making the most of being alive.

Among those who sang and entertained were Karpe Diem, Laleh and Bjørn Eidsvåg. There had been unconfirmed rumours that Bruce Springsteen would play. He did. He sang his own version of We Shall Overcome, which went down well. His wasn’t the most important name on the playing list, however.

The honour of performing last went to Lillebjørn Nilsen, and he got to do two songs, the last of which the audience joined in. It’s the same song the crowds sang outside the court in Oslo a while back, when thousands gathered there spontaneously, yet again holding roses.

Avengers as art

You can’t go far before running into the Avengers.

The official opening of the Manchester Children’s Book Festival took place at the Holden Gallery on Friday evening, and at the same time the exhibition Graphic History of the Future opened. It will be open to the public for the duration of the festival, i.e. Sunday 8th July.

Well worth going to if you like your old film posters and other period posters, as well as some Andy Warhol and Russian space memorabilia and what have you. Children may have seen Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlett on television, and they will probably enjoy drawing cartoons on the – designated – wall.

A bridge too far

That was a page 147 for me. Thank you (barely) and goodbye to The Bridge. Anything quite so unlikeable and horrible and pointless (and that’s just the third episode), leaving me not wanting to watch more, and with no special interest in how it ends, who did it, or anything like that.

I like Rohde. He is OK, for a Dane. I’ve trawled through the other characters, and can’t find anyone else who seems either real (in a fictional television kind of way) or in possession of any redeeming features. The fact that half of them are Swedes, and that they look and sound like people I might know and mix with, makes it worse. It’s easy enough for the British to snigger in the safety of this splendidly isolated island.

Sarah Lund’s awful boss made for an interesting rough sleeper, but as we left him between the two episodes I felt unwell. (OK, so I felt unwell before I started too, but this was really something.)

When the shoplifter said she came from Copenhagen; did you think she’s Danish? And now that it seems it’s all being done by someone with Asperger Syndrome, that’s fine, isn’t it? Takes one to catch one.

I would like to think that by next week it will be marvellously clear why it’s been awful so far, and The Bridge will morph into something of a masterpiece. Make me regret I gave up. But I doubt it.

Bron – The Bridge – Broen

I apologise for my fellow country-people. I don’t know what got into them. There is no way you can have another Lisbeth Salander, even if you make her into a police detective. And if you do, she’d need to be slightly less aspie (she wouldn’t have got to where Saga is if she was this weird), or you could have had someone older and uglier. That might have worked.

But, it was fun. Sort of. When I stopped cringing.

Are you foreigners managing to keep track of which country they were in? Are the landmarks clear enough? I’m afraid the Resident IT Consultant got his Malmö mixed up with his København at one point.

And it might matter if you can tell what nationality people are. The Swedish heart patient’s wife is Danish. If that’s relevant, I don’t know.

The zigzag man makes my skin crawl. And how I wanted that bomb to go off!

Have no idea what the Danish accents say about people. Needless to say Malmö is as ever populated by people from that place further north. Lowlife journalist is more of a southerner, but tries to pretend he isn’t.

Fairly sure it wasn’t the library charges that’s behind all this.