The noir in the next field's darker

Nurtured as we have been for some years on the TV genre known as ‘Nordic Noir’, no Englishman could be blamed for feeling a slight tingle at the idea of visiting one of the Nordic countries. Dangerous places, it would appear. Why, there’s even an apparently pleasant little market town called Ystad down in the south of Sweden where for a long time there was a new serial killer at work every week for a great deal of the year.

You understand that I’m not talking about a mere murder a week. No, I mean a series of murders a week.

Fortunately, they were blessed with a local police detective of almost superhuman ability, Kurt Wallander, who week after week identified the perpetrator and arrested him, often in spectacular fashion. Oddly, for a small seaside town, there always seemed to be a camera crew standing by to record the event. Not that I’m complaining: how would we have been able to enjoy it if they hadn’t been there?

One of the obstacles to Wallander’s success was, as so often in TV views of police work, his own hierarchy which never seemed to believe in him. Of course, I sympathised with him, but I have to admit that I can’t help wondering whether his superiors didn’t have a bit of a case: after all, just how useful is it to solve this week’s serial killings if it doesn’t deter next week’s?

Wallander: gets it solved but can’t stop it happening again

Still, I shouldn’t be too harsh. Swedish detective work is clearly recognised as outstanding even in other nations. Why, the Metropolitan Police in London seems to have appointed a Swede, John River, as a Detective Inspector, and ensured his doings (rather ghostly doings, considering the state of animation of his partner) are faithfully recorded in the aptly named River.

If things were so awful in Ystad, you can imagine how much worse they must be in the capital, Stockholm. It seems that this city is the hunting ground of an absolutely weird woman you really don’t want to cross. She’ll hack your computer and your phone, find out where you are, track you down and exact harsh, not to say bloodthirsty, revenge for any offence you may have caused her.

You can imagine how careful I was in Stockholm when I was there myself last week. I tried to work out whether any woman I saw might have a dragon tattoo on her shoulder but, hey, it was winter time and everyone was wearing coats, so how could I have known? For safety’s sake, I just kept out of the way of any of them.

I didn’t really feel safe until I got to the meeting for which I’d flown to this bleak and forbidding capital (which, to be fair, turned out to be neither). It was with a group of librarians, and it’s hard to imagine a less threatening profession (even if Professor Plum did get scragged in a library with a candlestick).

There’s that moment at the start of a meeting which pretty much decides whether it’s going to be a success or not. It’s when people are taking off their coats and getting out their notepads, deciding whether they want tea or coffee and whether they want a biscuit with it or not, and above all making small talk.

It struck me that I might start by mentioning how keen an admirer I am of the Nordic Noir genre. So I told them that I had enjoyed Broen/Bron, the series whose double name reflects its mixed Swedish/Danish origins. They all looked at me blankly, until the penny dropped with one of them.

“Oh, you mean The Bridge?” she said. It may not have helped that I had called the series ‘Broen’, or possibly ‘Bron’ (my pronunciation is far from reliable), which may have been the wrong language, or possibly neither. Anyway, The Bridge was indeed what I meant. They told me they’d liked it, but without the slightest trace of enthusiasm, like someone drinking your home-made wine who has decided not to offend you.

Warmth improved when one of them said, “I liked The Killing”, which they all seemed to have done. So had I, but I hadn’t mentioned it since it’s Danish rather than Swedish.

Then she added a comment which really surprised me. “I watched the American version too. And it was much better.”

What? The remake was better than the original? What world was I living in?

Finally, the truly astonishing revelation came out.

“I’m watching Line of Duty now,” another one of the librarians told me.

Now they were all enthusiastic.

“Oh, yes,” said another, “that’s a really great programme. We’re on season 3 now. It’s great.”

Line of Duty? That’s an English police series. I enjoyed it too. But it had none of the exotic content, the originality, the innovative viewpoint of Nordic Noir.

But then I suppose Nordic isn’t exotic to Nordics.

Or could it be that my first impression was right? That those Nordic series are only Noir to us? That to people on the ground they’re just a rather pedestrian description of everyday life?

Not proud of my prejudices

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it’s refreshing to have your prejudices challenged.

British Society has two great pillars, Church and State, and I’m not particularly fond of either. They’re still heavily intertwined over here where the Queen remains head of the Church of England. Other more enlightened countries have gone to some lengths to keep the State apart from the Church, as in France (where secularism is practically a state religion) or the US (which seems on occasion to regret the fact).

It’s not that I have anything especially against the Church of England. I’m just not convinced by two great arguments advanced for faith in general: that they bring consolation to individuals and communities together. The problem with the first assertion is that ‘because it makes me feel better’ has never struck me as the most persuasive argument for the truth of any proposition. As for the second, it seems to me that as soon as religion has built a community, it defines anyone outside it as ‘other’, and ‘other’ quickly degenerates into ‘wrong’ and ‘wrong’ in turn into ‘heretic’ or ‘unbeliever.’ That strikes me as far too close to persecution, hardly an activity for which humankind special motivation.

But then along comes someone like Giles Fraser. He was Canon Chancellor at St Paul’s, but resigned when it looked as though the cathedral authorities were going to evict the ‘Occupy’ protestors from outside their front door. He reckoned that he could imagine Christ being born in that camp. After a brief period out of work, he’s about to start a new appointment, not as a Dean or Bishop (although he was apparently on the right sort of shortlists), but as a vicar of an Inner London parish with some of the toughest social difficulties in the country.

I feel almost obliged to go and hear him preach. Fortunately, he’s going to be writing a regular column in The Guardian so I can be entertained and edified without having to do anything that drastic.

So much for the Church. What about the State and its great symbol, the Royal Family? Surely I can indulge my comfortable view that they're without redeeming features? But no sooner do I reassure myself on that point, than along they come and redeem themselves a bit. On a royal trip to Copenhagen, the Prince of Wales and Camilla had themselves introduced to Sofie Gråbøl, star of the extraordinary Danish series The Killing. And then they paid a visit to the set.

Sofie, in one her trademark jumpers, giving another to Camilla

It’s appalling, isn’t it? The two series of The Killing have provided some of the best TV I’ve seen in years. And some of the Royals like it too? Ghastly. I may have to concede that they have some taste.

At least it was Camilla who persuaded Charles to watch with her. She’s not a real royal at all but just married into the family (which in passing suggests that her good taste is perhaps not that reliable when we get out of the realm of TV series). She had to fight to get into the family, against the vehement opposition of the Queen. It was that paragon of parenting skills who initially managed not only to push Camilla out of the way but to move Diana in instead, and didn’t that work out well?

So at least I can console myself with the thought that my agreement with Camilla over a TV series isn’t really a concession to an authentic royal. Which is a relief. Because though it’s refreshing to challenge one’s prejudices, it’s also tiring. Nice to be able relax back into some simplistic preconceptions.

Season's greetings from our sponsor

A couple of weeks ago, a friend from Marseille wrote to complain about an initiative to include the name of a sponsor in that of the City’s historic stadium, the Vélodrome. 

‘Will it become the ‘Vélodrome Nutella’?’ he asks. And goes on to wonder whether Bernard Delanoë, mayor of Paris, isn’t missing a trick. ‘Why not turn the Champs Elysées,’ he suggests, ‘into the Champs L’Oréal – because we deserve it?’

Funnily, not more than a couple of hours after reading his remarks, I discovered that St James’s Park, as iconic in Newcastle as the Vélodrome is in Marseille, was being rebaptised the Sports Direct St James’s Park stadium. It seems that there’s a bit of trend starting here.

My friend sees cynicism in all this, quoting Oscar Wilde’s view that a cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. 

Well, maybe. On the other hand, isn’t this just a matter of turning some grand old monuments into tributes to business? And doesn’t business perhaps deserve them? After all, isn’t it to some our greatest businesses, especially in financial services, that we owe today’s climate of economic stability and widespread prosperity?

On the other hand, I was a little disturbed by a sight that greeted me as I came through St Pancras International station the other day. The main hall now houses a massive Christmas tree made of Lego bits.

Lego gets the tone right

At first sight, I was amused by it – it’s striking and funny at the same time. But then I thought again. 

Christmas is the second most important feast of the Christian year after Easter (yes, though you wouldn’t know it from the scale of the celebrations, the death and resurrection trump, in liturgical terms, the birth. You’ve got to admit that birth’s more common). This is a time of year devoted, by Christians at least, to giving thanks for the birth of the Lord and Redeemer of all mankind. Turning it into an opportunity for advertising by Lego, however charming, might seem inappropriate.

After all, what would it say about our moral qualities in the West if Christmas became just another massive binge of commercialism?

Postscript with no relevance to the above: we’ve just started watching the second series of The Killing. It’s proving as gripping and powerful as the first (I’m talking about the original Danish version – I don’t know about the American remake which I haven’t watched). 

What’s extraordinary is that Series 2 manages to be strikingly fresh in feeling, even though the formula is exactly the same: a main story that is a classic thriller based around murder (but with an extraordinary central character in the detective, Sarah Lund), a family struggling with events risking to tear it apart, and a reasonably likeable political figure having to cope with a crisis of fearful complexity without being able to place full trust in his staff.

Well worth watching.