The seminal Scandi series makes its triumphant return
It’s always a risk getting the band back together. Will things still gel? Will fans want only the old tunes? Borgen, the seminal Danish drama about coalition politics, has returned with a new title and theme tune, and the first thing to say is that, as played by Sidse Babett Knudsen, exstatsminister Birgitte Nyborg is still a stellar centrist fantasy figure deploying fire, ice and a podiumtopping smile.
The third series floated out on a satisfactory high in 2013, with Nyborg holding the balance of power as minister for foreign affairs. In Borgen: Power & Glory (Netflix) she’s back at the same desk just as Denmark finds itself in the eye of a massive geopolitical storm. Greenland, the old Danish colony, has discovered oil, and all the big shakers – the US, China and (boo!) Russia are loitering like jackals.
Unlike with previous incarnations (all on iplayer), the fourth series has one overarching plot: how can diplomacy and decency triumph over muscular superpowers and staunch the flow of fossil-fuel wealth? Meanwhile, in the parallel world of TV news, ex-anchor Katrine Fønsmark (Birgitte Hjørt Sorensen) is now the boss and being blindsided by hideous Twitter pile-ons and meddlesome shareholders. The bingeable narrative, which twists and turns and ticks along,
feels just right for the show’s new home on a streaming service.
While Borgen is now more planetfacing – showrunner Adam Price even presciently invokes a crisis in Ukraine – there is, of course, a tasty side-snack of feral coalition feuding. Nyborg’s bolshy frenemy is younger statsminister Signe Kragh (Johanne Louise Schmidt). There’s a hilarious cutaway when, after a rare moment of consensus, they face the press in identical coats.
The other standout newbie is Mikkel Boe Følsgaard as Nyborg’s envoy, the splendidly named Asger Holm Kirkegaard who gets more involved in Greenlandic matters than he ought. His hot Arctic dalliance is the only romantic subplot. Birgitte is single and utterly – even destructively – mono-focused on work. Her sole distractions are the menopause and the eco-activism of her son, Magnus (who is no longer a little blond putto).
Nothing could ever match the cockle-warming escapism of the first series, which went through the looking glass to discover principled politicians wielding power. In the new Borgen, and in Nyborg herself, we are plunged into a Mephistophelean murk. In this gripping, pell-mell reboot, all you can do is cross your fingers for her and for the world. But then hope was always Borgen’s renewable resource.
In the special Jubilee episode of The Repair Shop (BBC One) people were urged to bring in things with a royal link. Who half hoped that a certain duke might enter the barn hoping that someone might restore his battered reputation? Perhaps some things are beyond fixing.
Instead there was a customised tandem that John from Somerset, recently widowed, had pedalled around Normandy in 1977 with his wife-to-be. They’d painted it red, white and blue and, misconstruing this as a contribution to the entente cordiale, the French would cheer. Now it mainly consisted of rust. You know what happened next. John was much moved, as was anyone with a beating heart. You just hope he makes it over the South Downs when he essays London to Brighton for charity.
Some people dressed up for the occasion, and not just in statement cloth caps like diamond geezer Jay Blades, who laced his usual lovely jubbly welcome with an infusion of deference. Enter Peter, Yeoman Ward of the Tower of London, in full beefeating fig. He presented the brass lantern he carries on his nightly lock-up and pronounced it wobbly. There is probably more sophisticated security in situ for the Crown Jewels these days, perhaps involving computers and foot-thick steel, but who doesn’t love the trappings of Ruritanian operetta? Anyway, it didn’t require much repairing.
A pearly queen and a pearly prince handed in a jacket that a recently deceased pearly king hadn’t quite finished. This wasn’t strictly a repair job at all. They basically wanted the seamstresses to hand-sew a lot of buttons on. If the smiling ladies sustained needle-based RSI, they kept it off camera.
My favourite item was a broken plate brought from the north-east by Helen. Her grandfather, a miner, had daubed a riot of flowers onto it in 1887. In the 1970s Helen’s mum dropped it. Gummy glue now bulged like ridges of lava from the cracks. Kirsten, the very quietest expert in the barn, made all flaws vanish as if by magic, apart from the spelling of “jubiliee” on the back.
Borgen: Power & Glory ★★★★★ The Repair Shop ★★★