NORDIC NOIR BBC Four confirms repeat of The Killing

Originally broadcast in 2007 in its native Denmark and 2011 in the UK, The Killing is arguably one of the most influential crime dramas of all time.

Now it’s coming back… in repeat form.

Forbrydelsen introduced us to Detective Chief Inspector Sarah Lund who was on her last day with the Copenhagen police force, and about to move to Sweden to join her fiancé and transfer to the Swedish police.

Everything changes when 19-year-old Nanna Birk Larsen is found raped and brutally murdered. Sarah heads the investigation and is teamed up with her replacement, Detective Inspector Jan Meyer.

Troels Hartmann, a politician, is in the midst of a hard-fought mayoral campaign when evidence links him to the murder. The girl’s family and friends struggle to cope with their loss. Over a span of 20 days, suspect upon suspect is sought out as violence and political pressures cast their shadows over the hunt for the killer.

It’s well worth another watch.

The Killing: Saturday 1st May, 9pm, BBC Four

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Review: Fortitude (S2 E8/10), Thursday 16th March, Sky Atlantic

If there’s an unstated theme to this season of Fortitude, it’s communication – or rather the lack of it. Everyone is keeping secrets or avoiding the truth in some way, and no good ever comes of it – only when the full picture is revealed can the evil be halted.   

Review: Fortitude (S2 E6/10), Thursday 2nd March, Sky Atlantic

Now that Munk has been unveiled as a dyed-in-the-wool villain, we can’t help thinking he’s next for the chop – but who will get to him first? The blind hunter, the barmy shaman, or his mysterious (and presumably Russian) masters?

NB: There be spoilers in the ice

Review: Fortitude (S2 E5/10), Thursday 23rd February, Sky Atlantic

There’s a common sci-fi trope whereby the protagonists are somehow trapped in a limited area with something trying to get them – think Alien, or Village of the Damned, or Under the Dome. Fortitude is a perfect example of the genre – or is it?

NB: Spoilers

Review: Fortitude (S2 E4/10), Thursday 16th February, Sky Atlantic

Fortitude is a pretty grim place to live. The work is hard, the cold could kill you in minutes, and if the forces of nature aren’t enough, the local inhabitants seem to be determined to bump each other off. What Fortitude emphatically does not need is someone called The Man With No Face who goes around beheading people.

Review: Fortitude (S2 E3/10), Thursday 8th February, Sky Atlantic

It’s not often you get to write the sentence ‘after an exciting snowmobile chase, the cops recover the missing head of the murdered mustard addict’ – almost certainly the situation has never arisen in Midsomer Murders – but in Fortitude, this kind of thing is becoming routine.

Review: Fortitude (S2 E2/10), Thursday 2nd February, Sky Atlantic

After last week’s portentous episode, when it appeared that doom was descending on the township of Fortitude from all directions, things couldn’t get worse – could they? With the opener offering up a lot of questions and very few answers, as you would expect, it’s time now for the path to become clearer. First we have to discover the identity of the headless body found in the snow. As was pretty clear, it was the barfly we heard raving about demons and cannibalism – but we still don’t know who he was, or what he was doing in Fortitude.

NB: Spoilers ahoy!

Review: Foritude (S2 E1/10), Thursday 26th January, Sky Atlantic

What is it about Fortitude that makes it so chilling? It’s not just the sub-zero temperatures of the Arctic Norwegian setting, though you feel you could freeze just watching the befurred characters slogging through the snow; it’s more that a sense of dread permeates the whole series. Because while the town of Fortitude should be a chilly paradise, where everyone’s equal and happy and there’s no crime, in fact there is Something Lurking Under the Ice.

Interview: Sofie Gråbøl, Fortitude

We still love Sofie Gråbøl. The groundbreaking Danish actress was outstanding in The Killing – which bashed down the doors when it came to Nordic Noir – and has been a joy to watch in pretty much everything she has appeared in before or since. She popped up in series one of Sky’s enjoyable if entirely daft crime/horror mash-up, Fortitude, and now she’s back for a second run. We managed to get hold of an interview with Sofie, which you can read after the jumperoo.

Sky Atlantic reveals first trailer from Fortitude season two

Fortitude was a big-budget, wow-cast crime/horror mash-up from 2014 and it was good, if completely barmy stuff, telling the story of a small community in Iceland who slowly went insane after some ancient virus was disturbed and began to wreak havoc in the 21st century. We all know that’s returning in early 2017 for a second series, and now Sky Atalntic has released the first trailer from the new run.