Bullet Points: Obsessive Tube-Head Edition

• Almost five years ago, I wrote a short tribute on this page to Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), the 1969-1970 British TV crime series about two private-eye partners--one living, the other dead but still quite helpful in the way of investigating. At the time, it had been many years since I’d actually watched the program (which aired in the States as My Partner the Ghost). Earlier this week, however, I came across most of the 27 episodes of Randall and Hopkirk on YouTube. The opening segment from Episode 1, “My Late Lamented Friend and Partner”--first broadcast on September 21, 1969--can be found below. The full episode, in three parts, can be viewed by clicking here.



• Speaking of old crime and mystery series, are you familiar with Tightrope!, the 1959-1960 CBS drama in which Mike Connors (later of Mannix) played “Nick,” a police undercover agent assigned to infiltrate criminal gangs? Although it proved quite popular with viewers, the show was derided by loudmouthed prudes for “excessive violence” and doomed by a sponsor’s unwillingness to move the show to a more advantageous time slot. As far as I know, there isn’t a DVD collection of Tightrope!, but a YouTube channel called Media Mix has gathered together 30 of the original 37 episodes. The viewing quality is inconsistent, but it’s still good to see Connors (then going by the name “Michael Connors”) in his first series-leading role.

• In a post earlier this month I mentioned that a two-day extravaganza, “The Golden Anniversary Affair,” will be mounted in Los Angeles on September 26 and 27, commemorating half a century since the 1964 debut of NBC’s spy drama, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. A Facebook page promoting this event has long been available, but an associated Web site was just launched this week, giving information about tours, seminars, and celebs who will be on hand to greet attendees. It looks as if a number of details still need to be worked out, but there are probably enough specifics available on this “Affair” to convince veteran U.N.C.L.E. fans that they want to be part of it. Don’t wait too long to decide; attendance is limited to 100 guests, all of whom must be “invited” and pony up $135 for the privilege.

• Something called The Christian Post (which I’ve learned is an evangelical newspaper) brings words that the HBO-TV drama True Detective, which premiered in January of this year, may enjoy only a limited run. Series creator Nic Pizzolatto told an interviewer during Canada’s recent Banff World Media Festival that while he’s happy with the show’s success, he cannot maintain for long the pace of writing an anthology series on his own: “I can’t imagine I would do this more than three years. I mean, I’d like to have a regular TV show. We’ll have some fixed sets, regular actors and I could bring in people to help and I don’t have to be there every second. It’d be great.”

• Meanwhile, FX-TV’s Fargo, the darkly comedic crime drama based on the Coen Brothers’ 1996 film of the same name, has already run its 10-episode first-season course--and I have yet to watch even one installment. (Yeah, it’s been a crazy spring.) But after reading yesterday’s series recap post by Paul Levine, author of the Solomon vs. Lord legal thrillers, I think I need to wade into that program.

• Joe Brosnan has more to say about Fargo in Criminal Element.

• Most readers have probably forgotten Carolyn Weston (1921-2001), but she was the author of three novels featuring a pair of Santa Monica, California, police detectives, Sergeant Al Krug and Detective Casey Kellog. The first of those, 1972’s Poor, Poor Ophelia, inspired the 1972-1977 ABC-TV drama The Streets of San Francisco. Now comes word that Lee Goldberg and Joel Goldman, the writers behind Brash Books, a new crime-fiction imprint, have acquired Weston’s police procedurals, and plan to republish Poor, Poor Ophelia in 2015. What’s more, Goldberg tells me in an e-mail note, “we own [the three books] outright. So we are planning to continue the series with new novels. We’re in talks with an established female crime writer now about it. We haven’t decided whether to keep them in the ’70s in Santa Monica, or move the setting to San Francisco … or make a big leap and bring them to present-day San Francisco. It’s not as strange as it sounds. [Ed McBain’s] 87th Precinct books spanned decades, but the characters didn’t age. Same goes for Nero Wolfe. So moving our characters to present day, without aging them, has some precedent.”

• E.G. Marshall, star of The Defenders and The Bold Ones, would’ve celebrated his 100th birthday this week. He died in 1998.

• From the lighter side of TV crime comes Police Squad!, the short-lived, 1982 ABC-TV comedy starring Leslie Nielsen. A mere half-dozen episodes of that show were produced before it was cancelled, yet Police Squad! spawned the entertaining Naked Gun film series. The show was given a DVD release in 2006. However, I see it’s also available on YouTube, in case you would like to revisit Sergeant Frank Drebin’s earliest cases, without paying for the privilege.

• And one last television-related item: The Killing, the show that refused to die (its concluding, fourth season is finally set to start on Netflix in August), has now given birth to an original novel by Karen Dionne, The Killing: Uncommon Denominator (Titan). Criminal Element offers “an exclusive excerpt.”

• OK, I lied--one more: Joel Kinnaman, who plays Detective Stephen Holder on The Killing, recently stopped by the Los Angeles Times “for a live Web chat and was happy to report that, yes, restrictions will be loosened for the series’ final six episodes.” Read more here.

• If you’re on the lookout for classic Jim Thompson paperback covers and film posters, begin your searching here.

• Among the underrated detective/mystery films chosen by Jeff Flugel in his new post for the blog Rupert Pupkin Speaks (an allusion to 1983’s The King of Comedy) is P.J., George Peppard’s 1968 (pre-Banacek) big-screen private-eye flick. Flugel writes that P.J. finds Peppard “doing what he does best--being smug, cool and a hit with the ladies--and is peppered (ha ha!) with a lot of action and surprisingly bloody violence.” My own, more extensive remarks on P.J. are here.

• I’m sorry to hear that publisher Angry Robot Books is dropping its crime-fiction imprint, Exhibit A--especially since I was among the people who applied to become that line’s editor (one of several promising positions I sought, but was denied, in the not-distant past). In a statement covering this news, the company said, “We’re constantly trying out new concepts and new ideas, and we continue to publish popular and award-winning books. Our YA imprint Strange Chemistry and our crime/mystery imprint Exhibit A have--due mainly to market saturation--unfortunately been unable to carve out their own niches … We have therefore made the difficult decision to discontinue Strange Chemistry and Exhibit A, effective immediately, and no further titles will be published from these two imprints.” Among the authors recruited by Exhibit A were Daniel O’Shea (Penance), Karen Sandler (Clean Burn), Bartholomew Daniels (A Death Owed God), and Terry Irving (Courier). I hope they all find new publishers soon.

• Blogger Erin Mitchell shares her own thoughts about Exhibit A’s demise in a post for the blog Hey, There’s a Dead Guy in the Room.

• One falls, another rises: The Washington Post’s Ron Charles reports on plans by Paul Oliver, the director of marketing and publicity for Soho Press, to open a new publishing company, Syndicate Books, which “will focus on out-of-print mysteries and crime fiction.” Its first release, due in September, will be Get Carter, the 1970 novel by British author Ted Lewis that was later turned into a cult film of the same name starring Michael Caine. Charles adds that “Syndicate plans to publish all nine of Lewis’s novels--the result of ‘a couple of years’ of negotiation with the Ted Lewis estate.”

• I had many good things to say about C.J. Sansom’s Dominion, when that alternative-history spy novel was first published in the UK in 2012 (it has since enjoyed a U.S. release as well). Now Shlomo Schwartzberg shares his own thoughts on that book, as well as another similar what-if work, in the blog Critics At Large.

• Megan Abbott’s new novel, The Fever (Little, Brown), wins some important good press in The Atlantic.

• And this could prove interesting. Publishers Weekly reports that “Mary Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke have signed up to collaborate on a new novel, which will revisit characters and plot lines introduced in Clark’s bestselling I’ve Got You Under My Skin. The collaboration, The Cinderella Murder, is slated for a November 2014 publication and marks the first time Clark has written with an outside author.”

Back from the Dead

Well, rumors that the AMC-TV series The Killing--a lesser and previously cancelled American version of the popular Danish show Forbrydelsen--weren’t dead after all have been proved true. The Los Angeles Times reports today that the crime drama “has been resurrected for a third season by AMC and Fox Television Studios, bringing back its creator Veena Sud and original stars Mireille Enos and Joel Kinnaman.” An announcement from AMC’s president makes clear that this next season will focus once more on a single case, to be resolved (we hope) over the course of a dozen episodes.

E! Online mentions that “season three will begin production on Feb. 25 in Vancouver, Canada.” It’s not clear exactly when The Killing will return to the small screen, but there have already been clues as to the new story line. From ZAP2It:

A year after closing the Rosie Larsen case, Sarah Linden is no longer a detective. But when her ex-partner Stephen Holder’s search for a runaway girl leads him to discover a gruesome string of murders that connects to a previous murder investigation by Linden, she is drawn back into the life she thought she’d left behind.

(Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

READ MORE: “The Danes Do Murder Differently,” by Mike Hale
(The New York Times).

Bits and Bytes

• J.K. Rowling’s recent novel for adults, The Casual Vacancy, has received some negative reviews in the press as well as from fans of her best-selling Harry Potter fantasy series. Yet Britain’s BBC One and BBC Drama have reached a deal to create a TV series based on that book about a small English town rife with hidden class and inter-generational struggles. Rowling, who will reportedly be involved in the book’s adaptation, is quoted in The Hollywood Reporter as saying, “I always felt that, if [The Casual Vacancy] were to be adapted, this novel was best suited to television, and I think the BBC is the perfect home.” Plans are to debut the series in 2014.

• Does this 1945 novel by Richard Foster really feature “mysterydom’s only Tibetan-American private detective”?

• A few days ago, I featured in The Rap Sheet a Christmas episode of Man Against Crime, the 1949-1956 TV private-eye series. Today, the blog Classic American Showbiz leads us to a special 1974 Christmas episode of the police drama Adam-12.

• British-born Canadian author Peter Robinson reports on his Web site that DCI Banks, the UK TV production based on his long-running series of Inspector Alan Banks books, and starring Stephen Tompkinson, “is coming to PBS all across the United States.” Although I don’t yet see any notice of this development on PBS’s Web site, Robinson says the series will debut on this side of the Atlantic sometime in January. I’m very familiar with Robinson’s series (after interviewing the author for January Magazine more than decade ago) and have read a number of favorable notices about DCI Banks in Robin Jarossi’s Crime Time Preview blog. So this is a show I’d be very happy to add to my otherwise quite limited TV-watching schedule. To see a preview of DCI Banks’ pilot, based on Robinson’s 2001 novel, Aftermath, I refer you back to the author’s Web site. UPDATE: The Crimespree Magazine blog now reports that DCI Banks will debut on PBS “in the 2nd week of January.”

• Prolific novelist James Reasoner is the subject of a new interview in the online pub Lowestoft Chronicle. To read it, click here. Meanwhile, Pittsburgh writer Kathleen George is interviewed by Jeff Rutherford as part of his Reading & Writing podcast. Listen here.

• After many delays, the complete series DVD set of McMillan & Wife (1971-1977)--starring Rock Hudson and Susan Saint James as a crime-solving police commissioner and his trouble-attracting spouse--is finally set for release tomorrow. It contains 24 discs and boasts a retail price of $169.99.

• Really? The TV series The Killing may return to AMC? What about rumors that this show would wind up instead on Netflix?

• Blogger Jen Forbus offers her nominations for “crime fiction’s sexiest female authors of 2012.” I can only assume that a compilation of male writers will soon be forthcoming.

• R.I.P., Charles E. Fritch, at one time the assistant editor of Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine. He passed away in October. UPDATE: William F. Nolan has penned a fine memorial to Fritch here.

• And here’s an unusual YouTube find: The 1972 teleflick The Hound of the Baskervilles. Adapted of course from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1902 novel of that same name, this small-screen version of the tale featured English film actor Stewart Granger as Sherlock Holmes and Bernard Fox as Doctor John H. Watson. As I’ve explained before on this page, the movie (which also featured William Shatner) was a failed pilot for an ABC-TV series. I have watched this Hound twice, as I recall, but have not seen it in many years. If you would like a gander at it yourself, simply click here. I notice that the superior 1988 TV version of Hound, produced as part of Jeremy Brett’s wonderful Sherlock Holmes series, can also be viewed on YouTube. As can the 1939 theatrical rendition starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Hound of the Baskervilles fans (like me) could devote much of a day just to comparing these adaptations. Time well spent, I think.

Just When You Thought It Was Gone ...

Good grief, why won’t AMC-TV’s The Killing--a disappointing American version of the popular Danish program Forbrydelsen--just go away? The show was officially cancelled last summer. Now, though, there are reports that AMC is conspiring with Netflix to develop a third season of The Killing, possibly for initial release through Netflix’s on-demand streaming media service.

Series stars Mireille Enos and Joel Kinnaman are evidently already under contract to participate in a third season, so there’s no problem there. But how many people would give this resurrected drama another chance, after being so often let down by its storytelling?

Certainly not the folks at Omnimystery News.

In a recent post, they declared that showrunner Veena Sud’s further involvement in The Killing would be a deal-breaker. “The only way we’d return,” they insisted, “is if she publicly apologized for the way she handled the first two seasons of the series and then promised to create a positive viewer experience for the third season. Since that’s not likely to happen, we simply don’t have the time and energy to commit to being deceived again by her, and thus we’ll likely give the third season--if it comes to be--a pass.”

I regretfully agree.

Playing Catch-up

• The Showtime series Homeland, starring Claire Danes and Damien Lewis, “dominated” last night’s Emmy Awards ceremony, winning commendations for drama, actress, actor and writing. “The wins were not just well-deserved, they saved the broadcast from being a complete and utter bore,” writes Mary McNamara in the Los Angeles Times. I’m sorry now that I missed the show.

• Although the American version of The Killing was cancelled after two very disappointing years, the third season of the original, Danish version of that crime drama is scheduled to return to BBC4 in mid-November. (Hat tip to Eurocrime.)

• As previously announced, the Manhattan bookstore Partners & Crime closed with a party last week after 18 years in business.

• Wow, you don’t see book covers like the top one here anymore.

• Spinning off a new post theme, “competition,” A.V. Club contributors do their best to dissect the more-than-metaphorical chess game played out in “The Most Dangerous Match,” a 1973 episode of Peter Falk’s Columbo. Even though they insist this installment, written by Jackson Gillis, is not one of the series’ best, their words and video clips make me want to slip that episode into my DVD player soon.

• Buddies in the Saddle blogger Ron Scheer’s futuristic Western tale, “Half-Breed,” is this week’s new offering in Beat to a Pulp.

• Today brings an end to the Web’s “What a Character!” Blogathon, which--over these last three days--has highlighted “scene-stealing, delightful character actors that we all love to see on the big screen.” Among the performers discussed are Eve Arden, Lee J. Cobb, Richard Jaeckel, Ward Bond, Ann Miller, and Charles McGraw. A full list of participating bloggers and their subjects is here.

• And since it is National Punctuation Day here in the United States, let me just mention one of my biggest pet peeves: people who fail to use commas properly around the names of cities and the states or countries that contain them. The Associated Press Stylebook offers two correct usage examples: His journey will take him from Dublin, Ireland, to Fargo, N.D.; and The Selma, Ala., group saw the governor. Too many writers fail to insert a comma after the state or country name. This sentence, for instance, is incorrect: The Selma, Ala. group saw the governor. Having now made my point, I hope never to see that kind of mistake made again. Yeah, fat chance ...

So Much for That

File the following item under “Didn’t We All See This Coming?”: AMC-TV has cancelled The Killing, its etiolated and often turgid version of the Danish series Forbrydelsen, which drew such enthusiastic reviews during its English-subtitled run in Britain.

So, what went wrong with the American edition? Well, most significantly, AMC tried to squeeze as much story as it could out of The Killing’s original (but not that original, after all) story line: the hunt for the killer of a young Seattle girl named Rosie Larsen. Viewers sat through 13 hour-long episodes in Season 1, only to be told that they wouldn’t learn who committed the murder unless they dialed in for 13 more eps in this year’s Season 2. Like so many people, I gave up the show at that point. I never watched a single episode of The Killing’s sophomore season, though I did--finally!--find out whodunit.

READ MORE: “AMC Cancels The Killing …One Season Too Late,” by Jeremy Lynch (Crimespree Magazine).

Much-delayed Satisfaction?

Well, it’s finally supposed to be the night when viewers learn who killed Rosie Larsen on The Killing, AMC-TV’s version of the Danish series Forbrydelsen. I can’t say I give a damn anymore.

I sat through Season 1 of this ponderously paced and increasingly soap-operaish American adaptation of the show, only to be disappointed when the last episode still refused to disclose the identity of young Rosie’s slayer. I wasn’t willing to invest my time in the sophomore season of the drama. But if you’re still among those waiting to learn whodunit, the two-part season finale of The Killing will begin tonight at 9 p.m. A brief preview is available here.

READ MORE: “The Killing: So That’s Who Murdered Rosie?,” by Willa Paskin (Salon); “The Killing, Season 2: Post-finale Thoughts” (Omnimystery News); “Critic’s Notebook: Some (Possibly) Last Words on The Killing,” by Robert Lloyd (Los Angeles Times).

Take Notice

There’s very little chance of my sitting through a second season of the American version of The Killing. Especially since the original 13 episodes of that moody AMC-TV crime drama concluded without even answering the question raised so prominently in its promotions: “Who Killed Rosie Larsen?” But also because creator Veena Sud has already stated that the identity of young Rosie’s murderer still won’t be revealed until the end of Season 2.

Frankly, I don’t care anymore who was responsible for that crime. With the little time I’m to willing to give TV watching these days, I’d rather continue my viewing of old Mannix episodes, or sample something I have never seen before, such as Man in a Suitcase.

For anyone who’s interested, though, the first poster for Season 2 of The Killing has been released. The show itself will return on Sunday, April 1, with a two-hour premiere at 8 p.m. ET/PT on AMC.

Really, How Much “Darker” Can It Get?

AMC-TV’s much-publicized but ultimately disappointing crime drama, The Killing, won’t return to U.S. screens until April 1. However, the Danish series from which it was adapted is already looking forward to a third--and last--season, after winning over UK audiences in a subtitled version late last year. According to the Radio Times Web site,

The third series of hit Danish drama The Killing will probe the personal and moral consequences of the economic crisis.

Broadcaster DR has revealed that Sarah Lund’s final case will see her investigating the apparently random killing of a sailor. The unfolding story, again penned by Soren Sveistrup, will find Lund encountering the prime minister, the financial community and various social strata, all of which have been affected by the downturn.

Of the look of the new series, production designer Jette Lehmann commented: “We’re trying to describe a Denmark on the way down, which was not the premise of the first two seasons. It has become darker and heavier.”

You’ll find the full Radio Times article here.

(Hat tip to It’s a Crime! [or a Mystery ...]).

Detectives’ Work Never Ends

Damn lucky Brits! The second series of the Danish TV thriller The Killing, which made such a splash when it was shown in the UK last spring, is set to debut on BBC 4 on Saturday, November 26. Karen Meek offers a synopsis of the new series in her Euro Crime blog.

From Last to First

Tonight brings the 13th and final episode of The Killing, AMC-TV’s English-language adaptation of a much-heralded Danish crime drama. Although the series has been inconsistent in quality (my opinion, anyway), having watched it this far in, I don’t think I can resist finding out--finally!--who was responsible for young Rosie Larsen’s murder. If you need to catch up on any episodes, check the AMC Web site.

The series conclusion begins at 10 p.m. ET/PT.

As Omnimystery News reminds us, this evening will also offer “Three Act Tragedy,” the first in a trio of new Hercule Poirot stories on PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! That 90-minute episode will begin at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

TV’s New Standard for Procedurals?

Detectives Sarah Linden (Mirelle Enos) and Stephen Holder (Joel Kinnaman) pursue a missing girl in the premiere of The Killing.

AMC-TV’s masterful new Sunday night drama, The Killing--based on a wildly popular Danish series--grabs you first with its conceit: one case.

In a television landscape where the police procedural has become commonplace, where the bodies stack up in cities from Los Angeles to New York (with stops in Vegas and Miami), and where we revel in the quips of a David Caruso or the quirks of a Kyra Sedgwick as they bounce from garish case to garish case, The Killing proposes to spend an entire season investigating one murder in Seattle, Washington. The show--developed by Veena Sud, a veteran of Cold Case (among the better CBS procedurals), and returning tonight at 10 p.m. ET/PT--will play out in something resembling real time: Each episode of this season equates to roughly one day of the investigation as it continues over 13 days.

While the original Scandinavian noir series, Forbrydelsen (“The Crime”), was of course based in Denmark, and was English-subtitled for its broadcast earlier this year in Britain, The Killing is told all in English and takes place in drippy Seattle--although nearby Vancouver, Canada, actually stands in for Washington’s coffee capital. Peter Wunstorf’s blue-gray cinematography evokes the grim landscapes one might find in a story by Michael Connelly or Dennis Lehane. And as those same authors might have done, The Killing makes it clear that the death of teenager Rosie Larson matters.

It matters to longtime homicide detective Sarah Linden (Mirelle Enos of Big Love), who’s on her last day of employment when she gets drawn into what seems like a simple disappearance. And it matters to her new partner/replacement, Stephen Holder (Swedish actor Joel Kinnaman doing an astonishingly good American accent), a transfer from vice. Kinnaman delivered a scene near the end of last Sunday’s two-hour premiere that reminded me of Jon Hamm’s performance in Mad Men’s pilot: In one breath, I was thinking to myself, “Who is this guy?,” at the same time as I realized I was completely hooked on the series.

That’s not to take anything away from actress Enos, who is also quite good as the first female lead for an AMC series in a while. Much like how Sud subverts our expectations of the “mismatched partners” dynamic when dealing with Linden and Holder’s relationship, Enos is stripped down and stoic here, free of the eccentricities or neuroses that most female TV detectives seem to bear. She’s an observer, a thinker; and one of the gifts The Killing gives viewers with its long-play, single-case format is to allow Linden time to do those things, to react.

More than a couple of times while watching The Killing, I thought of Jodie Foster’s performance as Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs. While Linden is far more confident here than Starling was, the idea of a woman operating in what is predominantly a man’s world pervades The Killing. Coupled with Sud as a showrunner and Monster director Patty Jenkins doing the first half of last week’s introductory episode, that theme adds an extra level of subtext and fascination to this show. Too often we see horrible crimes committed against women, but give no thought to the repercussions. While The Killing doesn’t shy away from letting its audience know what happened to Rosie Larson, it makes sure we feel the tragedy and loss of it, too.

Which brings me to the reason why you absolutely must watch The Killing. That’s because, for the first time in as long as I can remember, this show makes the effort to really explore the effects of violent death on the family of a victim. Stan and Mitch Larson, played by character actors Brent Sexton and Michelle Forbes, occupy the bloody, beating heart and wounded soul of The Killing. The series honors their potentially career-reinventing and Emmy Award-winning performances by giving them the time they need to let their characters occupy the place of terror, guilt, and wrenching grief.

There was one particularly poignant scene in the two-hour premiere, during which Stan and Mitch struggled to tell Rosie’s younger brothers about their sister’s death. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a moment portrayed so well on television. It was a scene that left me grateful for the concept behind The Killing--without it, would the show have spent the time necessary to give that small but emotional exchange its power? It’s something close to an acting miracle, watching Forbes and Sexton bring that raw pain to life in a way that put a lump in my throat and a hand at my mouth.

Also excellent is this show’s score by Frans Bak, who provided the music for the original Danish series. It’s reminiscent of electronica-inspired scores by James Newton Howard or a later-era Michael Mann film. It gives The Killing an appropriately haunting feel, without completely overdoing it with strings and horns and James Horner clichés.

I haven’t said anything yet about Billy Campbell, who plays a Seattle mayoral candidate whose campaign might have ties to Rosie Larson’s death. That’s because the former Rocketeer star could be the only weak link in this series. The script is setting him up to be either the murderer or a massive red herring. He’s certainly not the cops’ only suspect, though. There seemed to be clues and tantalizing distractions layered throughout The Killing’s premiere that will make this program a true “novel for television--a single story playing out over one season, rewarding repeat viewings on DVD, much like how we return to our favorite crime novels again and again.

One season. One case. It’s a premise reminiscent of interesting earlier shows such as Steven Bochco’s Murder One (which focused on a single murder trial), as well as increasingly outrageous ones like 24. But this is AMC, known for taking similar high-concept ideas like “schoolteacher gets cancer, cooks meth” and “a man’s man at a 1960s ad agency; nostalgia rules!,” and creating rich, nuanced drama with memorable characters and unique visual styles.

There are many ways the concept behind The Killing could have gone wrong in execution. Instead, this Sunday night serial is shaping up to be one of the strongest crime shows in years. It might, in fact, be as much a reinvention of the procedural as Deadwood was of the western or The Sopranos was of mob dramas.

I’m not kidding. It’s just that damn good.

Small-Screen Gems

Tonight will bring the debut of The Killing, an AMC-TV miniseries. It’s based on a Danish program, Forbrydelsen, which--with English subtitles--ran over several months on Britain’s BBC 4, to high acclaim.

As Omnimystery News explains, the story “revolves around the Seattle murder of teenager Rosie Larsen, and the gripping police investigation it sparks. The facts of the case unfold against a backdrop of local politics, high-school scandal, and a grieving family flattened by tragedy. As leads turn cold and suspects multiply, the detectives race against time to find the killer. They soon discover that everyone is a suspect, every suspect has a secret, and every hour counts.” Meanwhile, TV Squad critic Maureen Ryan calls The Killing an “enthralling murder mystery” that “trusts its audience to follow along. It trusts that it doesn’t need fake melodrama or overheated intrigue to keep its audience’s interest.” The Killing kicks off at 9 p.m. ET/PT with a two-hour episode, and will continue with 12 one-hour episodes after that. You can learn more about this show here and here.

* * *

Also being broadcast on the boob tube this evening, but only in the UK--beginning at 8 p.m.--is the fifth series premiere of Lewis (or Inspector Lewis, as it’s known here in the States), the outstanding, often moving detective series starring Kevin Whately and Laurence Fox.“This spin-off from the fondly remembered Inspector Morse is as comfy as an old glove, and the Oxford setting [is] as distantly aspirational as an idealised university town can be,” Robin Jarossi remarks on the program in his blog, Crime Time Preview.

Series five of Lewis comprises four episodes, none of which yet appear on the schedule for PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery!, their usual venue on this side of the Atlantic. However, given the show’s popularity, I expect Americans won’t have to wait too long to see series five for themselves.

Perfect Obsession

This coming Saturday night, Britain’s BBC 4 will broadcast the final two episodes (installments 19 and 20) of that outstanding Danish TV crime thriller, The Killing. I must say, this series has taken the country by storm and stealth, even winning a mention in The Times’ “leader column” last weekend. Therefore, I don’t feel at all alone in admitting my personal obsession with the show.

So why all the excitement? Wikipedia offers the following plot synopsis:

Detective Inspector Sarah Lund is looking forward to her last day with the Copenhagen Police Department. She is supposed to move to Sweden with her fiancé and transfer to the Swedish Police, but everything changes when a 19-year-old girl, Nanna Birk Larsen, is found raped and brutally murdered. Along with Detective Inspector Jan Meyer, Sarah is forced to head the investigation, as it soon becomes clear that she and Meyer are chasing a very intelligent and dangerous murderer.

Local politician Troels Hartmann is in the middle of a hard election campaign to become the new mayor of Copenhagen when suddenly, evidence links him to the murderer. But is he really the murderer? At the same time, the girl’s family and friends struggle to cope with their loss.

Over a span of twenty days, suspect upon suspect is sought out as violence and political pressures cast their shadows over the hunt for the killer.

Due to a maddening workload, I haven’t been able to post much in The Rap Sheet for the last several weeks. But as a way to relieve stress, I’ve treated myself to The Killing (Danish title: Forbrydelsen, translated as “The Crime”) ever since it commenced showing on this side of the Atlantic back in January. For me, the series is something like a flat-screen equivalent of crack cocaine--highly addictive and guaranteed to chase away reality, at least for a short while. So, even though my family finds this latest TV addiction of mine annoying, I shall do whatever is necessary to see this weekend’s concluding episodes.

More and more residents of the UK have become avid fans of this program since its debut, thanks partly to unusual excitement expressed in press circles--and despite the fact that The Killing is being broadcast on BBC 4 in Danish, with English subtitles. This series offers a wildly labyrinthine plot, propelled by anxiety over what might happen next, with plenty of suspects, red herrings, political intrigue, heart-breaking performances ... Sheesh, after each episode, I feel as if I can’t take any more. Yet I keep coming back, because it appears that everyone and anyone might have been behind the murder of Nanna Birk Larsen, with each suspect appearing guilty and having his or her own dark motivations. I want to know, finally, who did it.

Following the last episode, No. 18, and as the series’ haunting theme music played over a snippet of footage teasing the next installment, I briefly considered dialing up the Danish Police and confessing to the crime myself, just to relieve the uneasiness then infesting my brain. When I related this proposal to my wife, she rolled her eyes and said, “After all the Stieg Larsson obsession, it seems you’ve shifted allegiance from Sweden to Denmark!”

Although The Killing ends its run in Britain this weekend, viewers who’ve missed seeing it can catch up with the equally subtitled DVD version.

Meanwhile, boob-tube watchers in the United States have their own version of this engrossing series to anticipate. Beginning with a two-hour installment on Sunday, April 3, AMC-TV will broadcast a new, 13-episode English-language adaptation of The Killing, with the story being transferred from Denmark to Seattle, Washington (though the show was actually filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada). This version will star Mireille Enos as lead homicide detective Sarah Linden, Joel Kinnaman as her police partner, and Billy Campbell as Darren Richmond, a local councilman angling to become the Emerald City’s next mayor. Executive producer Veena Sud promises that it won’t simply be a word-for-word translation of the original series. “We’re creating our own world,” she’s explained. “We are using the Danish series as a blueprint, but we are kind of diverging and creating our own world, our world of suspects and, potentially, ultimately who killed Rosie Larsen.”

Here’s a video introduction to the U.S. version of The Killing:



I’m always cautious with regard to U.S. remakes of television shows and movies, and I might yet be disappointed with what Sud and Company cook up. But one thing I’m glad of is that--as can be seen in the trailer embedded below--Enos’ Sarah Linden (an Americanization of “Sara Lund”) will wear the same “wooly-jumpers” that have featured so prominently in the version we’ve been enjoying in the UK, as worn by actress Sofie Gråbøl. Those Faroe Island sweaters have become something of a fashion statement hereabouts.



Even before The Killing starts in the States, though, we can look forward to a continuation of the Danish version. Series II aired in Denmark in 2009, and Series III is currently in production, with an air-date in that same country of September 2012.

If you want to learn more about why the crime-fiction-reading world seems to be revolving around Nordic and Scandinavian works lately, check out the BBC’s wonderful program on that very subject, which includes insights by UK critic Barry Forshaw. The show is archived here.

READ MORE: “Why The Killing Is the Best Thing on Television--10 Reasons” and “The Killing Was a Killer Show,” by Robin Jarossi (Crime Time Preview); “Danmark--hvor det sker! Or ... Denmark--Where It’s At!” (The Guardian).