On Tuesday, eight of the nine major mainstream English newspapers ran a story that the British TV series Midsomer Murders is teaming up with, or at least meeting, The Killing.
Batman meeting Superman was bad enough, but now Barnaby’s going to cuddle up under a massive Faroese cardigan with Sarah Lund to eat some baby whale. Or something like that.
Well, no. This looks like one of those press release hatchet jobs where the original headline has made it through relatively unscathed. Sure, DR will be, with cringeworthy glee, assisting the producers of Midsomer Murders when they film a couple of scenes over here, which will feature an actress who once appeared in The Killing, but there’s no funny business going on in which the series merge into the same universe. Midsomer Murders is equally teaming up with Borgen. And Bamse og kylling. A pretty boring story, in other words.
But the English media lap it up. We ourselves know this only too well and are predisposed to running stories about that cursed series. Nobody loves it more than the Guardian, but yet it’s the only major mainstream English paper to ignore this story. Could it be that there’s been a memo circulating its HQ forbidding anyone from writing another frivolous story about how cool/quirky/pragmatic the cuddly Danes are? We can only hope.
It’s always been embarrassing to know the Danes love Midsomer Murders so much. The original star, John Nettles, came over here five years ago and was treated like royalty. How anyone can seek escapism so turgid is beyond me.
They should try instead this year’s Golden Days, which is embracing philosophy (if reaching a higher consciousness does it for you), or how about some wakeboarding, or at least watching it. And there’s also Buster, the children’s film festival – while it’s encouraging to see there are some documentaries this year, escapism is the oil that drives the trillion dollar toy industry.
Movies meet toys: that’s the real killing.
