The Killing II

Hurrah. "The Killing" (or rather "Forbrydelsen" which better translates to "The Crime") is back with a new series on BBC Four. I don't always agree with AA Gill's television reviews in The Sunday Times, but he put into words exactly how I felt about the first episode on Saturday:
"The Worst bit was waiting for it to start. Would it be the same? ......  (Would) they want to give it twists and new directions.........So Phew, tak. The first few minutes were a great, huge cathartic relief, a reassurance that it was all going to be allright. The haven't changed a thing. "

Like me he likes the "convoluted confusion... the politics....everyone's a suspect and, most important, Sarah Lund is still the buttoned-down, wound up, taciturn piece of Nordic ice-hotness in a scratch hair shirt" (the jumper did change for Episode 1 to the (blood) red garment in both pictures - (the one above courtesy of MEESON,HITANDRUNMEDIA.COM in the Sunday Times). And of course Denmark "is still a strangely featureless flat land full of strangely featureless flat people".

We agree about the foreign language giving a disturbing sound, and how the film is shot with "an awkward and disconcerting mixture of disengaged exterior observation and intensely fraught interior claustrophobia, but with good chairs". Gill doesn't mention the music. Fortunately exactly the same melancholy melody as before. If anyone at film school wanted an exam question to compare Scandinavian crime drama with American, they should look no further than how Series 1 was remade in the USA. Everything discussed above was missing. Chalk and cheese.