Borgen: Series 1 (2010)

basics...

From the country, channel and even some of the cast who brought us the awesome Forbrydelsen comes a Danish hybrid of The West Wing (one of the best TV shows ever) and Commander-in-Chief (one of those shows that US channels like to cull before they reach a full season, this one was a sub-West Wing melodrama with Geena Davis as the first female US President) that sees Birgitte Nyborg (Sidse Babett Knudsen) take up the post of Denmark's first female Prime Minister and leader of a shaky coalition government.

brilliant...

Another winner from the Danes! And another strong female lead to rival Sarah Lund in the tough yet human form of Birgitte Nyborg. The show has The West Wing's sense of drama, political insight, and hot button current issues, plus Commander-in-Chief's female in charge premise, along with that show's propensity to fire a staff member seemingly each week (so I've no idea why Borgen is to be remade in the US, it's already been done!). It also has a wry sense of humour, real tension and believable characters. Birgitte has to juggle life as PM with her slowly unravelling marriage - to none-other than Sarah Lund's partner/villain from Forbrydelsen II! - and it is a credit to Borgen that although the fissures are there early and you fear that they may actually come to blows, the storyline never feels forced or soapy, it's natural and understandable, and both characters are so real you route for them both. Nyborg's cabinet (including Theis Birk Larsen as defence minister!) are a motley crew and it's particularly interesting to see how coalition politics, so common all over the world except in UK, works and using it as a mirror with our current government. The other lead characters are Joshua Jackson-lookalike Kasper Juul (Pilou Asbæk), Birgitte's spin doctor, and TV1 anchorwoman and wannabe-investigative journalist Katrine (Birgitte Hjort Sørensen). Neither was as easily likable as Birgitte to begin with - he was a bit of a slime ball and she was irritatingly grief-stricken, but both blossomed into key elements of the Borgen whole, with the government's relationship with the media playing a particularly important part in Denmark's political life. And Katrine's boss is only Lund's first partner, Jan Meyer (Søren Malling), but much funnier here. The plots were mostly self-contained in each of the 10 episodes but there were many long-running threads, and the nature of the storylines - dealing with terrorism, racism and the sovereignty of Greenland - were suitably topical and explored some very interesting ideas.

briefly...
Intelligent, thought-provoking, funny, dramatic, emotional, topical... quite simply one of the best dramas I've seen.