TV extra Scandi-noir stars bridge the gap on questions of identity

GEMMA DUNN

FIFTY-TWO chauffeured Porsches, a viewpoint over the Oresund Bridge and the Choir of Young Believers playing in the background – you’d be hard pushed to think of a better way to bid farewell to The Bridge.

An elaborate curtain call, maybe. But as its stars Sofia Helin and Thure Lindhardt will admit, the Scandi-noir crime series – synonymous with the sports car – was never going to go quietly.

It’s already sparked a storm of protest over the opening scene of the new series which shows a woman being murdered in a most graphic fashion.

Moving the action on two years, the concluding chapter, which has been switched to BBC Two, sees Helin and Lindhardt reprise their roles as Saga and her innately talented Danish partner Henrik Sabroe.

Helin, 46, says of Hans Rosenfeldt’s creation: “You do come closer to us; it’s a lot about their relationship this season.”

“The characters are so well written and complex, and they fit so well together that people are interested in seeing how they solve their lives.”

The overarching theme, however, is identity, with the trigger point the refugee crisis – and the murder of the head of immigration.

“She gets stoned to death,” reveals Lindhardt, 43. “And right before, they find out that she has been celebrating throwing someone out of the country – with champagne.

“We actually have a case in Denmark where our minister for integration did that,” he adds.

“She celebrated with cake and put it on Facebook. But that happened after this was written,” he points out. “Our

France had escaped much of the political and social turmoil sweeping the rest of the world General de Gaulle had been back in power for 10 years, overseeing a period of economic stability. But tensions were mounting among the country’s young people who felt their voices weren’t been heard by the old-fashioned, paternalistic regime and when student Daniel Cohn Bendit confronted a government minister, it sparked a chain of events that resulted in France all but closing down. Here, Joan Bakewell looks back on the period and assesses the legacy of the protests.

Tortured By Mum and Dad? – The Turpin 13 (C5, 10pm)

On January 14, a 17-year-old girl called the Thure Lindhardt as Henrik Sabroe and Sofia Helin as Saga Noren show has always been very good at predicting things – tendencies and trends in society.”

As for the anticipated twists and turns: “There’s some,” he teases. “But it’s very much about, ‘What are we if we are not what we think we are?’

“Often, as human beings, we identify ourselves with what we do. At least in my country, if you meet a person you don’t know at a dinner party, the first thing you’ll ask is, ‘So what do you do for a living?’,” says the Danish actor, who replaced Kim Bodnia as a lead last season.

“That is how we identify ourselves and others. ‘I’m an actor’. Which is not

emergency services claiming to have escaped from a California house where she and her 12 siblings were being held captive. When the police arrived, they discovered children between the ages of two to 29, some of whom were chained to their beds or emaciated. The story of the Turpin family made headlines around the world, yet much of it remains a mystery. This one-off documentary takes a closer look at the case and the couple at the centre of it, David and Louise Turpin. It follows their 30-year journey across America, from the hills of West Virginia to the remote Texas countryside, and ultimately to a California cul-de-sac, and asks how they were able to keep the alleged abuse on such a scale hidden.