Close to 1.7 million Danish viewers tuned in for Sunday night’s season three premiere of ‘Forbrydelsen’ (‘The Killing’) on DR1. And the nation’s critics weren’t disappointed either, with high marks across the board from almost all the media outlets.
Politiken newspaper called it “F***ing great”, naming Nikolaj Lie Kaas the “Danish answer to Cary Grant”. Kaas, a new addition to series three, is best known in Denmark for playing the lead in ‘Dirch’ ('A Funny Man'), and abroad as playing the assassin in ‘Angels & Demons’.
The newspaper commended the same raw, neo noir cinematography used in previous seasons.
“The setting is a dark and demonic side of Copenhagen, with overgrown shanty towns in the shadow of big business glass palaces,” observed Politiken. “In such a moral mess goes one brave and honest woman with a heart of gold: Sarah Lund.”
Other media remain fixated with the lead character’s taste in jumpers.
Her appearance “is just as much a Scandinavian illusion as the brandy-drinking, pipe-smoking Maigret is a Parisian premise”, commented the newspaper Jyllands-Posten. “But it works anyway: you bear with it, because the rest is such good entertainment.”
Politiken, Jyllands-Posten along with fellow national daily Berlingske as well as the tabloid BT, gave the show five out of six stars. Only the tabloid Ekstra Bladet gave it a negative review.
Awarding just three stars, it found it “more confusing than enchanting,” claiming the scriptwriters “for fear of boring their viewers, made the classic mistake of including way too much information”.
