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This TV series is Scandinavian. It is a crime drama named 'The Bridge' and co-produced by Sveriges Television and Danmarks Radio. It revolves around a police investigation after a dead body is discovered on the bridge that connects Sweden and Denmark. The first broadcast in Australia was in September 2012 on SBS Two.
This series was the very first joint collaboration produced both financially and creatively between Sweden and Denmark. Its creator is Hans Rosenfeldt and the writer is Bjorn Stein.
There is a second series that started its production in October of 2012 and plans to broadcast late in 2013.
The Plot
Two body halves are discovered halfway across the Oresund Bridge connecting Denmark's Copenhagen with Sweden's Malmo. One body half belongs to a female who is a Swedish Politician.
The body is cut directly in two at the waist. It was intentionally placed right on the border of these two countries. That means that both the Swedish and Danish police have jurisdiction in the matter. Upon further examination they realize the body halves are from two different corpses. The one is the Swedish politician and the other is a Danish prostitute, so the lead investigators Martin Rohde (Danish) and Saga Noren (Swedish) get to work tracking down the murderer.
Soon the investigation begins to escalate quickly. A journalist by the name of Daniel Ferbe (it was his car used for committing the crime) starts to get some strange phone calls. The caller (a man who is soon called the 'Truth Terrorist') claims he is committing these crimes to draw attention to some of the social ills taking place.
Stefan Lindberg (a social worker) has a sister who ends up being one of the victims of this 'Truth Terrorist'. That makes him an early suspect, but the unfolding events soon cause the lead investigators to conclude that this killer is connected to the police. They also discover that the plans for these crimes were planned out over the course of several years.
Eventually the trail leads them to a Danish policeman named Jens. His used to be a close friend of Martin (who they believed committed suicide after his wife and son died from a car accident on that same bridge).
During the course of investigating Saga and Martin soon develop a good solid working relationship in spite of their stark differences. Martin is the father of a 20-year old boy from a first marriage. His name is August and he currently lives with Martin and his wife today named Mette. She and Martin has three children together after which he finally gets a vasectomy. Not long after Mette learns she is pregnant with twins.
On many occasions 'The Bridge' could not pull sufficient numbers of viewers to get place in the weekly Top-10 programming list on SVT1. It was mainly because the competition coming from TV4 (a commercial broadcaster) along with their gaining of more than a million viewers.
In Sweden the series won a time slot for its first five episodes. It won out over competition coming from Hawaii 5-0 airing on TV4. From episode 6 and beyond, it aired against a popular reality TV show 'Berg Flyttar' which would eventually beat out The Bridge until they came to the final episode in which these two virtually tied.
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