The Bridge raises the bar on Scandinavian crime drama

If you were given to sporting clichés, you’d call The Bridge a crime of two halves, because this latest offering from the seemingly bottomless well of Scandinavian crime drama centres on two murder victims – the top of one and the bottom of another – dumped right on the bridge that links Sweden and Denmark.

That’s should be intriguing enough to warrant at least a cursory glance, but if you start watching this compelling crime drama that is currently running on BBC Four, you’ll be hooked before you even know it.

Even as the latest in a packed field of dark, broody, Scandinavian thrillers – most recently The Killing – this one stands out from the pack, because it is such a clever concept brought to life by a top-class cast and with enough sub-plots to leave you thinking into the small hours.

The Bridge from which it takes its title is the Øresund Bridge, which links Copenhagen in Denmark to Malmö in Sweden, and is the longest in Europe.

It opens with the lights going out on this massive piece of engineering achievement, and a body being dumped on a freshly painted line to indicate the precise border between the two nations.

The cadaver’s top half, which lay just inside Swedish territory, was quickly identified as the torso of a prominent female Malmö city councillor. The butt end, stretching on to the Danish side of the border, belonged to a Copenhagen prostitute who had gone missing over a year before – and who doesn’t appear to have been hugely missed in the meantime.

But the international crime scene – not to mention the fact that both halves of the body are from adjoining nations – means the investigation is carried out by one of the more unusual detective double acts – the beautiful but barmy Saga Norén (Sofia Helin) and the more traditional, cynical ‘seen it all’ Martin Rohde (Kim Bodnia). She has a penchant for tight leather trousers and picking up one night stands in bars, but she seems to be lacking on the emotional front with no time for relationships that last longer than six hours ... or children.

Rohde is a middle-aged Danish detective with a world-weary manner who looks like a cross between Alexei Sayle and Harry Molloy from Fair City, and he’s in bad form because this investigation begins the day after he’d had a vasectomy.

For more, read this week's Connacht Sentinel.