House of Cards, for smart people

The delightful political drama of Denmark’s Borgen

Every episode in the Danish TV series Borgen begins with a quotation lettered on the screen, usually from a great historic figure. The 30th show, the final one, carries a quote from Lincoln that summarizes the theme of Borgen: “If you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

But Borgen is not about a man. The individual who gets tested by power is a woman, Birgitte Nyborg, who becomes the first woman prime minister of Denmark. This drama about her and Denmark is the best fictional TV I’ve seen in years. It’s available on DVD, in Danish with expertly made English captions.

The people who created it for DR, the state network, expected to win a mostly Danish audience. Sidse Babett Knudsen, who plays Birgitte, says, “It never occurred to me that this would travel abroad. I mean, it’s about Danish coalition politics.”

And so it is, but it’s also about marriage, romantic love, the troubles of two-career families with children and, above all, the difference between the excitement of planning to get power and the responsibility of exercising it.

Birgitte’s closest advisor tells her, in the first episode, how different life will be for her as PM. She may well end up firing some of her friends.

The script depicts Birgitte’s beginnings as a charming, leftish rookie and her evolution into a leader. She frustrates another party’s plan to limit immigration. When asked, she goes off to Africa and prevents a war. She defends Denmark’s welfare state against budget-cutters. She personally investigates reports of widespread poverty in Greenland, a semi-autonomous part of Denmark. When Danish troops die in Afghanistan, she handles the crisis.

To become prime minister, a Danish politician assembles a coalition of parties whose elected members add up to a majority. In the real world, the current government came together by combining Social Democrats, the Danish Social Liberal Party and the Socialist People’s Party. PM since September 2011 has been Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the first woman head of government. She became PM months after Borgen installed Birgitte in the job.

Denmark apparently prizes moderation. At one point a journalist says the big fight is over the centre. In a moment of triumph Birgitte declares, “Politics must be realigned to the centre.” In this fictional parliament, voters can choose from Liberals, Labour, New Right, the Greens, the Freedom Party, Solidarity and Birgitte’s Moderates. Later, leaving the Moderates, she starts her own party, the New Democrats. The big dramatic event that begins the series is Birgitte’s organization of her winning coalition.

Amazingly, it’s coherent and absorbing. Knudsen, who brings grace and authority to the role, makes it clear that Brigitte is doing something daring, something she wasn’t sure she could carry off. Her combination of timidity and bravery is stirring. “Who knew Danish politics were so exciting?” said Anderson Cooper of CNN, one of the program’s fans.

Adam Price, the creator and producer, respects his audience and his subject. He wants to explain what happens in Borgen, “the castle,” a term for Christiansborg, the Copenhagen palace that contains parliament and the supreme court.

Nothing gets in the way of politics for long but two sexual subplots run along beside it, one Birgitte’s own and the other involving Katrine, a woman TV journalist. Katrine and Kasper, Brigitte’s press officer, fall in love, creating journalistic complications. Torben, Katrine’s overpowering boss at the TV station, acquires his own overpowering boss, who pressures Torben to inject gimmicks to win higher ratings for political news. Just as in reality, politics and media feed off each other.

For a while Birgitte successfully balances her career with her life as a mother of two and an economist’s wife. When the economist feels neglected and leaves, she finds a successful and affectionate British architect as her new lover. “Danish women love British men,” says Knudsen.

This well-focused collection of stories has stirred audiences in Portugal and South Korea, Greece and Japan, France and Australia. It’s been seen in 70 countries, mostly by people who normally can’t even name the real Danish prime minister.

The New York Times once called Borgen “a cult hit” and on another occasion a “cult favourite.” In the Times, a show becomes a cult if it wins a vast international following but gets ignored by North Amer- ican networks. Several Canadian journalists have said that Canadians should see it, if only to learn what a country with a fraction of our population can accomplish in television. (There are 5.6 million Danes.)

It’s hard to watch it without thinking resentful thoughts about the unambitious management of the CBC. But Borgen has also caused British critics to direct similar complaints at the BBC, which has never done anything on politics as spirited and convincing. In the U.K., it had about a million viewers. When the BBC started the third season, the poet and journalist Clive James was ecstatic: “She’s back! Birgitte Nyborg is once more among us!”

Knudsen, who previously acted in many Danish films, became something of a celebrity through playing at the centre of this series. But she’s a private sort of celebrity: She gives interviews about her work but won’t speak about her own life. She’s said to have a son but won’t confirm that or say whether she has a partner. On the street Danes usually just smile at her as she rides her bike among them, occasionally telling her they wish she was the prime minister.

In France, Borgen made her a star. Knudsen insists that Birgitte was not based on an actual politician but there’s a rumour she was modelled on Margrethe Vestager, the former economics minister, recently appointed competition commissioner of the European Union.

After the production of Borgen ended, some of the people involved wanted to produce a fourth season. Knudsen is all for it, but she prefers to wait. “I think we should do Season 4 in 10 years,” she said. She thinks that the future possibilities of Birgitte leave plenty of room for drama. “I don’t think we’ve exploited that. And I’ll be out of work in 10 years.”

Not good enough for me. When I saw the last episode on DVD, I wanted Borgen to keep going forever.