Why Scandinavian TV Is So Good

Courtesy of Vox.com 

Over the past fourteen (nearly fifteen) months of pandemic  lockdown, Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video have  become my three most important sources of entertain ment. For me, curiously, that entertainment has come time and  time again in the form of Scandinavian TV productions such as  Rita, Borgen, Home Ground, and The Rain. 

Nor am I in the minority—a New York Times article on  Danish TV quotes Tesha Crawford, Netflix’s international TV di rector, as saying that the first season of The Rain was “one of the  most successful non-English series to date.” Note that The Rain was also Netflix’s first-ever Danish TV show. In fact, streaming  services are so eager to get new content from Denmark that  the tiny country, with a population of 5.8 million people (just  over half the population of NYC) and only one dedicated film  school, cannot make new shows fast enough. That same New  York Times article describes how “Both TV2, a public station,  and the [government-sponsored Danish Film Institute] recently  called on the Danish Film School—the country’s only training  center of its kind—to double its enrollment to meet the demand.  Currently, only 42 students are admitted every two years.” And  it’s not only Danish TV. Released in 2020, Norwegian TV show  Ragnarok has already been renewed for a second season and  was marked by television tracker TV Time as the second most  anticipated new season for May of 2021.  

Aside from being made in Scandinavia, these shows have lit tle in common. Consider their plots: The Rain follows a broth er-sister duo in a post-apocalyptic world where rainfall carries a  deadly disease; Ragnarok is a fantasy show based on Norse my thology; Home Ground is about the new female coach of a small town men’s football club; and Rita follows the life of a teacher  Borgen cast members at a Danish school. Nevertheless, all these shows manage to be  incredibly entertaining and worthwhile watches. They main tain an unconventional lightheartedness. The shows are easy to  watch and understand without lacking depth, and there is a par ticular realism that they all share. The characters don’t always  have perfect makeup, perfect hairstyles, or smooth and clear  skin. None of the characters have perfect lives, and the produc tion maintains the delicate balance of exhibiting character and  societal flaws without making the series emotionally draining.  These factors make Scandi series uniquely relatable and realistic. 

Most of all, these shows can take a seemingly simple idea and  weave it into a complex plot that can be serious without being  heavy or take an off-putting and challenging core idea and create  a compelling story out of it. Borgen falls into the latter category.  First released in 2012, it was well received and is now licensed  to Netflix, which is currently working on the fourth season. The  Guardian sums up its appeal beautifully: 

Yes, Borgen is about politics. It follows Birgitte Nyborg, a  newly elected Danish Prime Minister, and her efforts to lead  her country well. Frankly, I never thought a show about politics  would ever be worth watching or recommending, but now I can  confidently say that Borgen is among the best series I have ever  watched.  

One other common factor that makes these shows intriguing  to me is the different way of life that these shows exhibit. I’m  not Danish or Norwegian or from any Scandinavian country, so  I love a show like Borgen, which provides details into how the  media works in Denmark, how socialized healthcare works, the  intricacies of Danish parliamentary politics, and what the heck  a coalition government is. The ability to explore an entirely  different society through a form of entertainment that is also  relaxing and fun is fantastic.  

Another curious aspect of Scandinavian television is how it  challenges stereotypes, held by many Americans, of what Scan dinavian culture is like. The “Q Shaman,” one of the many insur rectionists who stormed the Capitol building on January 6, wore  a Viking-like helmet. Moreover, according to the Washington  Post, in May of 2017, “the white supremacist Jeremy Christian  — who is accused of killing two men in Portland, Ore., on Friday  [May 26] — posted on Facebook, ‘Hail Vinland!!! Hail Victory!!!’”  For context, Vinland was the name given to a region of the coast  of North America by Leif Erikson and other Vikings when it is believed that they landed there, sometime in the tenth century. As  the Washington Post puts it, “For white supremacists, the concept  of Vinland asserts a historical claim over North America, stretch ing especially from the Northeast coast to the Pacific Northwest.  They use the myth of Vinland to position themselves as righ teous defenders in the wars of race and religion they believe are  coming.” However, the shows coming out of Scandinavia don’t  have these racist, aggressively masculine undertones that Amer ican white supremacists project upon Scandinavia. A substantial  part of Rita focuses on the main character’s fight to dismantle  sexist double-standards that govern her life as a schoolteacher.  A major plot point of Borgen is how Birgitte Nyborg’s campaign  was obstructed by sexism and another how the only Muslim  politician, Amir Dwian, is tokenized by other characters. All  this contradicts how many Americans perceive Scandinavia and  adds more depth to an already profound collection of TV shows. 

I recognize that the language barrier can be intense. For me,  it’s not a problem. I really like subtitles (see my February 2021  opinion article), but I’m aware that this is not true for everyone.  These shows are all in languages that are incomprehensible to  an English speaker, but if you’re like me and have exhausted  much of the streaming catalog at this point in the pandemic,  take a look at a Scandinavian TV show. Trust me, you’re in for a  real treat.