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| Your next box set: Unit One | Your next box set: Unit One |
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| Imagine if Clare Balding and agent Dana Scully from The X-Files somehow merged into one being to become Denmark's first female homicide chief. You'd watch that, wouldn't you? And now you can (sort of). Charlotte Fich plays Ingrid Dahl, who is tasked with battling institutionalised sexism while nailing a string of mostly stubbly ruffians who don't share her vision of Denmark as a wholesome land of sophisticated interior design, gender equality, foraging-based cuisine and – to a lesser extent – Lego. Since her promotion, her relationships with her weedy spouse and sad-eyed son have become strained. They won't be going on that holiday to Norway now, what with her former colleague's murder still unsolved. | Imagine if Clare Balding and agent Dana Scully from The X-Files somehow merged into one being to become Denmark's first female homicide chief. You'd watch that, wouldn't you? And now you can (sort of). Charlotte Fich plays Ingrid Dahl, who is tasked with battling institutionalised sexism while nailing a string of mostly stubbly ruffians who don't share her vision of Denmark as a wholesome land of sophisticated interior design, gender equality, foraging-based cuisine and – to a lesser extent – Lego. Since her promotion, her relationships with her weedy spouse and sad-eyed son have become strained. They won't be going on that holiday to Norway now, what with her former colleague's murder still unsolved. |
| Buy it from | |
| There is an undeniably irritating noise running through the DVDs in this box set. It's the sound of a UK distributor scraping a barrel marked Nordic noir; a barrel that has already been scraped by BBC4 executives, who gave us The Killing, Borgen, The Bridge and Wallander. | There is an undeniably irritating noise running through the DVDs in this box set. It's the sound of a UK distributor scraping a barrel marked Nordic noir; a barrel that has already been scraped by BBC4 executives, who gave us The Killing, Borgen, The Bridge and Wallander. |
| Dahl, who has Balding's way with eyeliner and Scully's line in trouser suits, is in many respects a proto-Sarah Lund but lacks what made The Killing's heroine so revolutionary: the gait of a man with balls too big for his jeans and a perspective on authority that made Dirty Harry seem like a rule-bound pussy. But without Dahl, there would have been no Lund – which makes Unit One essential viewing for students of TV sexual politics in smaller EU states. | Dahl, who has Balding's way with eyeliner and Scully's line in trouser suits, is in many respects a proto-Sarah Lund but lacks what made The Killing's heroine so revolutionary: the gait of a man with balls too big for his jeans and a perspective on authority that made Dirty Harry seem like a rule-bound pussy. But without Dahl, there would have been no Lund – which makes Unit One essential viewing for students of TV sexual politics in smaller EU states. |
| So is there a place in our midwinter soirees for more rashers of Danish bacon? Well, Unit One is worth your time not just because its 522 minutes of International-Emmy-winning, flying-squad-type thrills will improve your Danish. It launched in 2000 and ran for four years – meaning it hails from a time when the bankability of Faroe Isle sweaters for women wasn't even a twinkle in a knitwear retailer's business plan. This was also before Mads Mikkelsen (here playing a psychopathic maverick cop) would establish himself globally by whacking the bollocks of Daniel Craig's Bond with a knotted rope. | So is there a place in our midwinter soirees for more rashers of Danish bacon? Well, Unit One is worth your time not just because its 522 minutes of International-Emmy-winning, flying-squad-type thrills will improve your Danish. It launched in 2000 and ran for four years – meaning it hails from a time when the bankability of Faroe Isle sweaters for women wasn't even a twinkle in a knitwear retailer's business plan. This was also before Mads Mikkelsen (here playing a psychopathic maverick cop) would establish himself globally by whacking the bollocks of Daniel Craig's Bond with a knotted rope. |
| Dahl's sexist boss, we find, may well have been compelled to promote her because his own boss thinks she's the best candidate. He, naturally, thinks a woman head of homicide will be a liability because she'll be distracted from crime-solving by her period, cooking her son's tea and getting her roots done. In reality, of course, he's a unreconstructed oaf, while her clear-up rates are unprecedented. Dahl is helped by a team of specially stereotyped investigators. Gaby Levin is the blonde hottie (played by Trine Pallesen, the PM's assistant in The Killing III). Jens Peter Jørgensen is the old hand who could/should have had Dahl's promotion. And Allan Fischer (Mikkelsen) is the squad naughty boy, all fast cars and one-night stands. | Dahl's sexist boss, we find, may well have been compelled to promote her because his own boss thinks she's the best candidate. He, naturally, thinks a woman head of homicide will be a liability because she'll be distracted from crime-solving by her period, cooking her son's tea and getting her roots done. In reality, of course, he's a unreconstructed oaf, while her clear-up rates are unprecedented. Dahl is helped by a team of specially stereotyped investigators. Gaby Levin is the blonde hottie (played by Trine Pallesen, the PM's assistant in The Killing III). Jens Peter Jørgensen is the old hand who could/should have had Dahl's promotion. And Allan Fischer (Mikkelsen) is the squad naughty boy, all fast cars and one-night stands. |
| Unit One's major shortcoming is that it looks old fashioned when watched in the wake of The Shield and The Wire. But what does that matter when you can listen to DI Mads and CSI Nerd on a stakeout, trading quotes from Schiller in the original German? "Only wholeness leads to clarity," says one. "And truth lies in the abyss," adds the other. | Unit One's major shortcoming is that it looks old fashioned when watched in the wake of The Shield and The Wire. But what does that matter when you can listen to DI Mads and CSI Nerd on a stakeout, trading quotes from Schiller in the original German? "Only wholeness leads to clarity," says one. "And truth lies in the abyss," adds the other. |
| That moment reminded me of what drew me to Danish crime dramas: the pleasure of seeing something from a rain-soaked dime of a country that's a bit like here, but satisfyingly more dismal and literary. | That moment reminded me of what drew me to Danish crime dramas: the pleasure of seeing something from a rain-soaked dime of a country that's a bit like here, but satisfyingly more dismal and literary. |