Everyone loves Borgen, the Danish political thriller which puts the corridors-of-power intrigue into a very human context. As she prepares to meet her Scots fans at not one but THREE public events in Edinburgh, the series’ star Sidse Babett Knudsen talks

THE exact numbers aren’t available yet but if the past five weeks are anything to go by, around a million people tuned in to watch last night’s series two finale of Borgen, BBC4’s gripping Danish political drama. If you were one of them, you’ll be pleased to learn that series three is currently screening in Denmark and should air on UK terrestrial TV this time next year. You’ll also know by now that we left lead character Birgitte Nyborg having resolved crises in both her personal and professional lives. Up to a point, at least. The prospect remains that she may have to relinquish her present job as leader of the country – or Statsminister as Borgen afficionados have come to know the position.

If you prefer your superior TV dramas in box-set form – season two is out on DVD tomorrow, by the way – or if you’re one of a handful of fans who didn’t watch last night’s episodes because you have tickets for today’s screening of them at Edinburgh’s Filmhouse, I trust that hasn’t spoiled the ending. If it has and you’re in the second camp, you can console yourself with the knowledge that attending the Edinburgh event is Borgen’s 44year-old star, Sidse Babett Knudsen.

Speaking to the Sunday Herald ahead of her trip to the capital, Knudsen fills in a few of the blanks about Birgitte Nyborg’s future. “When we leave the second season, two-and-a-half years go by before we enter season three and every main character is in a new position, including Birgitte,” she says. “And that’s all I can say.” Like I said, a few of the blanks.

Knudsen arrives in Scotland to find a country still in thrall to all things Danish after the success of Borgen, cop thriller The Bridge and of course The Killing.

A fortnight after today’s event, the Filmhouse welcomes another Dane who has made his mark on the country’s TV output: Ingolf Gabold. A former head of drama for Denmark’s public broadcaster DR and the man responsible for bringing The Killing and Borgen to the small screen, he’ll give a talk entitled What Makes TV Series Travel, illustrated with clips from both Danish series and from the US remake of The Killing.

Given all that, it’s incredible to think that Knudsen needed persuading to take a role on the small screen. “It did take me a while,” she admits. “I was approached about another series a year before Borgen and at that time I really hadn’t seen that much TV drama and definitely not much Danish drama.” Having spent most of her career in film and theatre, TV was a medium she instinctively dismissed. “I didn’t like the fact that TV comes into people’s homes, that they could drink coffee and go to the toilet while I was acting. It seemed undignified.”

Too undignified, perhaps, for a woman who for the last decade has been regarded as one of Denmark’s top film actresses. What changed her mind – though not fast enough for her to sign up to that first, un-named TV project – was a box-set of HBO political drama The West Wing which she was given to watch. She loved it.

“It took me a year to soften to the idea of doing TV and I was just ripe when I got the call one day about Borgen. They said it was a political show and I’d be playing the Prime Mnister. I had just finished watching the whole seven series of The West Wing in one go so it felt like a very natural continuation of my West Wing experience.”

Another enticement to doing TV the fact that Sofie Grabol (“our biggest screen actress,” in Knudson’s modest estimation) had already made a success of The Killing, both domestically and internationally. “When she did that show and I heard that she’d been involved in the development of it and that it was genuine collaboration with her, that opened my mind to it.”

Regular watchers of Borgen will know from Birgitte Nyborg’s telephone conversations with, for example, the American Secretary of State, that Knudson’s English is excellent. You can’t act your way into that fluency.

She learned English as a child in Tanzania, where between the ages of five and seven she attended an international school in Dares-Salaam. Later, as an aspiring actress, she spent six years living in Paris, where the equally impressive French was picked up.

Returning to take up roles in experimental theatre in Denmark in the early 1990s she became a leading light in a generation of actors and directors inspired by the radical Dogme 95 manifesto created by compatriots Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg.

“Something was definitely going on in the 1990s. I do see it as a generation of actors which is trying to work in another way, and which is trying to have a different approach to cinema and therefore to television,” she says. “Like most new movements it came from everything being completely dead and artficial. The way actors were acting on screen it was very mannered and old-fashioned.” Deputy First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon MSP: Has the role changed your view of real-life politicians, and would you ever consider standing for election? “I know more about politicians because of the research and being in the programme. I can’t give any clear examples, but it has given me a more nuanced view of politicians, that’s for sure. I know more about the process of a law being installed. But I’m definitely not going to go into politics. It hasn’t pulled me in that direction!”

Into this new world came experimentalism, avant-garde radicalism and improvisation. “I wrote my first part myself and the next one I wrote many of the scenes,” she adds. “So I’m brought up on being a part of a production.” But, she says, there is one thing television has given her. “I have never had the platform to show 30 hours of performance before this Nyborg part ... I’ve had so many opportunities to show her off and so many possibilities to make nuances and show different sides to her.”

Fluency with language is just one thing that makes her so believeable as a Danish Prime Minister. Another is the fact that Denmark’s current Statsminister is also a woman, Helle Thorning-Schmidt. She’s two years Knudson’s senior, not unlike her in appearance, and has two children. So, in Borgen, does Birgitte Nyborg: young son Magnus, and sulky teen daughter Laura.

This is important. While political junkies thrill to Borgen’s behind-the-scenes look at how power is wielded in the inner sanctum, at the compromises and trade-offs that go with European-style coalition politics, it’s the show’s flip-side that grips most viewers. Here is a story about families and relationships, and about how even a Prime Minister can find both intruding on her work with devastating effect. Nyborg is also a mother and a wife and the writers make sure