The Daily Beast: "The Bridge: FX’s New U.S.-Mexican Border Thriller"

FX’s The Bridge, about a serial killer investigation that entangles both sides of the U.S.–Mexico border, is very good. If you haven’t seen the Danish-Swedish series it’s based on, you might even think it’s great.

At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest story (one of my very last ones, in fact), "FX's Border-Killer Thriller," in which I review FX's The Bridge, based on the Danish/Swedish drama Broen, which begins tonight at 10 p.m. on FX.

Borders are complex signifiers, reinforcing both national and cultural identities as well as distinguishing between outsiders and insiders. Where you are, how you see yourself, depends largely on what side of the wall—visible or invisible—you’re standing on at the moment. Few modern-day national borders are as fraught or as psychologically charged as that between the United States and Mexico, a nearly 2,000-mile line in the sand that is the most frequently crossed international border in the world.

It’s this international way station that acts as the backdrop for FX’s provocative new mystery thriller The Bridge, which is based on the Danish/Swedish drama Broen and which begins its 13-episode run Wednesday night at 10 p.m. The American adaptation of the hit drama series (a ratings success in the Nordic region as well as in the U.K.) moves its crosscultural concerns away from Scandinavia, instead exploring the socioeconomic, psychological, and cultural effects of the border between the U.S. and Mexico and two detectives from either side of the divide.

When the corpse of a woman is discovered in the middle of the Bridge of the Americas (also known as the Cordova Bridge), which links El Paso, Texas with Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, each country claims jurisdiction over the incident. As the bridge is shut down while the identity of the victim is ascertained, detectives Sonya Cross (Diane Kruger) and Marco Ruiz (Demián Bichir) square off over whether an an ambulance—carrying a wealthy American citizen in the throes of a heart attack—should be allowed to cross the border.

It’s the first time that these two disparate people—American and Mexican, female and male, introspective and gregarious—have met, and the collision between Sonya and Marco informs much of the drama to come as they are forced to work together to track down an insidious and intelligent killer. The woman on the bridge, as the detectives come to learn, isn’t just a single corpse: the top half and the bottom half belong to two separate victims, one an American judge and the other an unknown female, one of former murder capital Juárez’s hundreds of slain women in the last 20-odd years, whose continued disappearances and deaths now register barely a mention in the American media.

The killer, it seems, has a need to bring to light some of the shocking inequalities between the U.S. and Mexico, but he is no crusader. Instead, he—or perhaps she—delights in causing mayhem on both sides of the border, illuminating the travesties facing those trapped by the border while simultaneously perpetuating them. He has a drive to create both carnage and impact, and he reaches out to Daniel Frye (Matthew Lillard, appropriately smarmy here), a drug-addicted newspaper reporter working well below his potential, in order to cast his message even wider.

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The Daily Beast: "The Rise of Nordic Noir TV"

The Duchess of Cornwall is just one obsessive viewer. Nordic Noir—embodied in Scandinavian dramas like The Killing, The Bridge, and Borgen—have become cult hits in the U.K., and are about to become the go-to formats for American TV pilots. I explore the genre’s appeal, its breakout female characters, and why audiences in the U.S. are unlikely to see many of them in their original form (but it is possible to see them!).

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "The Rise of Nordic Noir TV," in which I explore why these Scandinavian dramas have become cult hits in the U.K., how they are ripe for American adaptations, and their universal appeal.

While AMC’s The Killing has been dumped in a trunk to die like Rosie Larsen, its progenitor, Denmark’s Forbrydelsen, continues to slay viewers around the globe on the strength of its moody wit and strong-willed protagonist.

Forbrydelsen (in English, The Crime) became a cult hit in the United Kingdom when it aired on BBC Four last year, quickly embedding itself within the cultural zeitgeist. Like The Killing, it revolves around the search for the killer of a teenage girl, tightly drawing together political, familial, and personal concerns within its web. Sales of the chunky Faroese sweater worn by the show’s lead detective, Sarah Lund (Sofie Gråbøl), skyrocketed, with the jumper’s maker, design firm Gundrun & Gundrun, reportedly unable to keep up with the insane demand. Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, was such an obsessive fan of the series—it’s the only show that she and Prince Charles watch together!—that she visited the set of Forbrydelsen’s third season earlier this year, and was delighted to be presented by Gråbøl with a Faroese cardigan in the style of Lund’s. Gråbøl herself turned up in Absolutely Fabulous’s Christmas special, reprising her role as Lund in a dream sequence. She was, of course, wearing The Jumper.

“Even people who haven’t watched [Forbrydelsen] know about The Jumper,” said Radio Times TV editor Alison Graham. “Now, whenever a new Nordic Noir show is about to arrive, I’m always asked by viewers—wryly, of course—about ‘the knitwear.’”

Sweaters aside, Forbrydelsen and its fellow Scandinavian imports—The Bridge, Wallander, and 2012 BAFTA International Programme Award winner Borgen, which have been loosely dubbed “Nordic Noir” by its adherents—have become bona fide hits in the United Kingdom. And Hollywood has responded in turn. The trail originally blazed by Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and BBC/PBS’s English-language Wallander has resulted in a hunger for more Scandie drama, with viewers on both sides of the Atlantic gobbling up original-language versions, a trend that has continued on the television side. (Scandinavia could be close to usurping the appeal of white-hot Israel, one of the largest exporters of scripted formats to the U.S., with shows like Homeland and In Treatment. A&E is developing an adaptation of Danish crime thriller Those Who Kill, while The Bridge is a likely contender to score a remake as well.)

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