Review: Borgen - politics and crime in Denmark

Derek McMillan

The Killing, a Danish TV series interweaving crime drama with political drama was a great success on BBC 4. In the Borgen series, the same producers concentrate on political shenanigans in the Danish parliament.

While not written from a socialist perspective it shows the political elite and the media in bed with each other (quite literally in one strand of the story). The media and political elite seem to live in a comfortable incestuous environment and the one group not heard in this political democracy is... the people.

One episode shows a female prime minister trying to implement a modest reform - a bill calling for 50% of all boardroom appointments to be female. The government would carry out punitive taxation measures against any firm which did not go along with it. Ostensibly feminist, this measure would not benefit the overwhelming majority of Danish women.

If you watch the show, look out for media smears used to discredit a minister proposing this measure; a strike of capital aimed at letting big business dictate to the government and more than one rotten compromise.

The Danish Labour Party are present as a comic turn responding to advances by the far right by trying to prove they can be every bit as racist, misogynist and Islamophobic as the fascists!

It is alternately political and personal; searingly serious and hilariously funny; foreign and all too familiar! Watch it.

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