Killing time again - Forbrydelsen II

In much the way author Howard Norman revisited the same story in three books from 1994 to 2002, the writer of The Killing, Søren Sveistrup, has been tipping his hat to familiar themes in the second series of the Danish crime drama. The original series (Forbrydelsen in Danish) stood out in part because of its focus on the family and friends of various central characters, especially those related to murder victim Nanna Birk Larsen.

Four episodes into the noticeably tighter Forbrydelsen II, the action is less immediately personal, though there are hints we may learn a little more about enigmatic heroine, detective inspector Sarah Lund. Her son has settled permanently with his grandmother, whose impending wedding gives Lund another family occasion to muck up or miss altogether, to put alongside her attempt to move in with Swedish ex-boyfriend Bengt.

Sofie Gråbøl is as outstanding as ever as Lund, whose powers of detection continue to outweigh the character's ability to play things by the book, coupled with an innate talent to be in the right place at the wrong time. As Gråbøl told me of her character in a recent interview for Time Out, 'She makes connections, that's her talent, her gift. Of course she has a strong gut feeling but there's nothing supernatural [about her intuition].'

Lund is one of only two recurring characters in the series - the other being her boss, Lennart Brix (Morten Suurballe). The political background is played out at a national level on this occasion, albeit with the state's civil servants still proving obstructive. Senior figures throughout seem to know more about the deaths of several people attached to a military unit in Afghanistan than they're letting on.

There are echoes of the excellent Danish film Armadillo (2010), which BBC4 would do well to screen during The Killing II's current run; the character Søgaard is notably familiar from Janus Metz Pedersen's Afghan documentary. Lund's case also has political as well as personal repercussions, not least for the women who are forced out of their jobs after having affairs. (There's even a replacement for luscious Rie Skovgaard in Ruth Hedeby.) Nor has the Danish weather improved.

There is, too, the initial frisson with Lund's new colleague, the brilliantly named Ulrik Strange (Mikael Birkkjaer), who has already succeeded where her previous (romantic) partner failed - by taking her to Sweden, as if that's some sort of strange Danish euphemism. Birkkjaer and Gråbøl previously appeared together in a film about a couple dealing with their daughter's death, Aftermath (2004). It's out on DVD on Monday.

Søren Sveistrup has injected warmth and dark humour in their relationship, worthy of the Swedish TV version of Wallander. (Gråbøl told The Guardian that Lund would beat Wallander in a fight - 'no contest'.) The writer is also playing with viewers' knowledge of what happened to Lund's previous police partner, and has just placed Strange in jeopardy. We'll have to tune in on Saturday to find out how that goes.

Sofie Gråbøl on the writer of The Killing

200th POST

In July I was lucky enough to interview Danish actress Sofie Gråbøl in Copenhagen for an article in this month's Voyager. The conversation revolved around the hit series in which she stars, The Killing, including some lovely jumper philosophy. When we met, shooting was about to start on a third series in Denmark; The Killing II (pictured) is set to screen on BBC4 after the current repeated run of the first series.

After the rigours of the original, 20-episode season she said she'd mainly been tempted to revisit her character, detective inspector Sarah Lund, by the collaboration with writer Søren Sveistrup. Gråbøl was great company; here's what she said about working with Sveistrup, with whom she'd also previously worked on an Emmy award-winning romantic comedy called Nikolaj and Julie:

'I enjoy acting and the basic work but I also enjoy the whole skeleton of the character. Those meetings we have - the collaboration I have with the writer - are really interesting, they’re just as interesting as the actual acting. I like the construction of the character and the script, building the whole skeleton of emotions and he allows me to be involved in that.

'It works in the way that he writes a script that's almost finished and then we gather and we read it and the actors have meetings with him afterwards and you can say whatever you want, you can comment on whatever you want. It allows him to be in a constant dialogue with the project and to me that's extremely fulfilling.

'To me it's a sign of great self-confidence that you are so confident in yourself that you allow other people to influence [you]. You pick the good ideas. People who aren't confident, if you're insecure, it's very easy to say no. To say yes, to be open is frightening at times - also in my work, to throw yourself into a direction you’re not sure of. To me he's very good at that.'

UPDATE The Killing II screens on BBC4 from 19 November 2011.

Related: tracking down Danish band Gangway (100th post)

Danish duo

In keeping with a fondness for reading fiction from places I've visited, I recently embarked on a couple of books by Danish authors. Carsten Jensen's We, the Drowned (cover detail pictured) could do worse than having a quote from Henning Mankell on the front (and back) and features Newfoundland - another predilection of mine - but unfortunately pales alongside Michael Crummey's Galore, my stand-out read of the year so far. Both novels focus on seafaring towns, and Jensen's work has the broader historical sweep, but the magical realist elements (a feature of both books) are gradually swept away. I don't read many books by women, but We, the Drowned - with its theme of the feminisation of a town and its way of life - is particularly male, and suffers for it.

Mercy, the first novel to be translated into English by Jussi Adler-Olsen, shares with Pedro Almodóvar's latest film, The Skin I Live In (from a novel by Thierry Jonquet), the theme of punishment and illegal incarceration. Given its Danish origins, it's tempting to point out the political machinations in the book's background, which are reminiscent of those in TV series The Killing. Out now in Penguin paperback, Mercy starts poorly but soon gets going, and signals a new line of investigation for fans of Scandinavian crime in the 'Department Q' series.

Ten or 11 things I know about Godard

1. A Bout de Souffle (1959) was written by François Truffaut, who was also supposed to oversee erstwhile Cahiers critic Jean-Luc Godard's filmmaking debut, which stars Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo.

2. Godard had wanted to cast Danish model Anna Karina in a small role in A Bout de Souffle but she refused to do nudity. When he pointed out he had seen her in a TV ad for Palmolive soap she replied she’d been wearing a bathing suit beneath the suds - 'It was in your mind I was naked.'

3. Karina and Godard married in 1961, the year he cast her as the lead in Le Petit Soldat. The release of his second film was delayed for two years due to its portrayal of the war in Algeria; in the meantime Karina starred in comédie musicale Une Femme est une Femme (pictured top, 1961) as a woman whose husband doesn't want her to have a baby, so she turns instead to his best friend, played by Belmondo.

4. Belmondo and Karina teamed up again for Pierrot le Fou (1965), part-gangster flick, part-road-movie, part-musical comedy portrait of the end of the the marriage of Godard and his star.

5. By the time of sci-fi flick Alphaville (1965), starring Eddie Constantine, Godard's love for Paris had dimmed and he used locations around the city as the setting for his dystopian vision of the future.

6. Godard has a bit of a thing for using prostitution as metaphor: for the acting industry in Vivre Sa Vie (1962), featuring a stand-out performance from his muse, Karina, and for living in Paris (Deux ou Trois Choses Que Je Sais d’Elle, 1966).

7. Deux ou Trois Choses… was made simultaneously with political movie Made in USA (1966), shooting one in the morning and the other in the afternoon. Karina is the girl with a gun in the latter, a multi-coloured noir film.

8. Godard makes an unexpected cameo in children's film Shéhérazade (dir. Pierre Gaspard-Huit, 1963), which stars Karina: 'The beggar walking on his hands is Jean-Luc Godard, in disguise of course, and without his glasses,' she says.

9. La Chinoise (pictured above, 1967) presaged the following year's student uprising although a year before JLG had been skeptical of consumerist apathy among 'the children of Marx and Coca-Cola'; Jean-Pierre Léaud is a winning lead amid the sloganeering of Masculin Féminin (1966) as if Truffaut's Antoine Doinel - name-checked here at one point - has had a lycée education.

10. In Passion (1982), starring Isabelle Huppert, narrative, sound and image are fragmented; other themes and appearances that can be traced across the films include, crucially, a preoccupation with pinball machines (notably also in Vivre Sa Vie).

11. Léaud, Nathalie Baye and Johnny Halliday are among the stars scurrying about in 1985's Détective, a Feydeau-esque policier where the hotel setting seems to serve as a potted version of contemporary France, much as the cruise ship takes on global connotations in his latest, Film Socialisme.

All the films cited here are available in the DVD boxsets Jean-Luc Godard - Vols 1 & 2 and Jean-Luc Godard: '60s Collection except Film Socialisme, which is in (some) cinemas now

Three great European artist's museums

1. Musée Gustave Moreau, Paris

Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau (1826-1898) converted this space - pictured - to show off his fantastic work, an example of which was used recently on the cover of Roberto Bolaño's gargantuan novel 2666. The artist's apartment and Grand Tour souvenirs are preserved as he wanted, while paintings fold out of wall-mounted holders.

14 rue de la Rochefoucauld, 9th; closed Tuesdays. €5.

2. Sir John Soane Museum, London

On a grander yet not less intimate scale, architect Soane (1753-1837) modelled this incredible venue to house his collection of books, sculpture and drawings for 'amateurs and students'. An act of parliament preserved the space after his death as close as possible to his intentions.

13 Lincoln's Inn Fields, WC2; open Tuesday-Saturday. Free.

3. Thorvaldsens Museum, Copenhagen

The name Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844) may not ring any bells but his grand sculptures can be found in many of Europe's major cities. Denmark's oldest gallery, above, was specifically designed to house the oeuvre he bequeathed to the state - the sculptor's grave is in the central courtyard.

2 Bertel Thordvaldsens Plads, Slotsholmen; closed Mondays. 40kr.

If you happen to read this and can recommend other great artist's museums around the world in the comments below, please do!

Louisiana, Denmark

Apologies for the relative silence here, I went to Denmark where I visited this beautiful, coastal gallery (among other things, which I'll come back to). A 40-minute train ride from Copenhagen, Louisiana's collection includes work by Frank Auerbach, Per Kirkeby and Peter Doig, with a special emphasis on Alberto Giacometti. Outdoors sculpture is from Alexander Calder (pictured above), Jean Arp, Max Ernst and Henry Moore (below), and there are temporary exhibitions, too: architecture show Living and David Hockney's iPad drawings run until autumn.

Hans Christian Andersen and the Pet Shop Boys: The Most Incredible Thing

Amid a slew of new ballets on London stages, The Most Incredible Thing opens at Sadler's Wells tomorrow, with a score by Pet Shop Boys and choreography by Javier De Frutos. It is based on a four-page story written by Hans Christian Andersen late in his life about a ruler's promise to give his daughter's hand and half his kingdom to 'whoever could present the most incredible thing'.

The story is emblematic of Andersen's brevity and wit; here he describes the efforts of subjects hoping to fulfil their king's challenge: 'Two of them ate themselves to death and one died of drink while trying to do the most incredible thing, each according to his inclination... Little street urchins practised spitting on their own backs; that's what they thought was the most incredible thing of all.'

A 'tenderhearted' young man creates a remarkable performing clock which the judges agree is 'the most incredible thing' until a 'tall, strong, bony fellow' comes forward and smashes it to pieces. '"Destroying a work of art like that," said the judges. "Yes, that is the most incredible thing!"'

Andersen doesn't finish there, though I will allow you to discover the end for yourself. In her introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of Andersen's Fairy Tales (2004), editor Jackie Wullschlager notes: 'In his anxiety over the future of civilised values in a changing world, Anderson is one of us. To current readers, echoes of war and the terrorist attacks across Europe, the United States, Asia and the Middle East with which the twenty-first century opened, sound throughout the tale.

'The battle between culture and aggression, though, is timeless. The story was inspired by the Franco-Prussian conflicts of the 1860s and 1870s, but between 1940 and 1945, during the Second World War, it was widely circulated, with anti-Nazi illustrations, among the Danish Resistance to German Occupation.'

No wonder the tale appealed to Pet Shop Boys. The great Dane has had his stories adapted as ballets before, notably for the eponymous production in Powell and Pressburger's The Red Shoes (1948), but this seems to have struck a chord for Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe.

In an interview with the BBC, choreographer De Frutos says he heard 'Russian Constructivists, 1920s marches, militaristic stuff' in the score. Tennant is famously fascinated by Balkan politics and Russian history, a theme that pops up in Pet Shop Boys' first hit West End Girls (1984), with its reference to 'the Finland Station' (where Lenin arrived from Germany in 1917), through the choirs on the Bilingual album (1996) to their 2005 soundtrack for Battleship Potemkin (from 1925).

Then there is Andersen as a conflicted figure, apparently bisexual though some claim he remained a virgin his entire life (despite being a regular frequenter of prostitutes, in which case - as Michael Booth wonders in his 2005 travel biography of Andersen, Just as Well I'm Leaving - what was he doing with them?).

Andersen was self-obsessed and ambitious and must have cut a striking figure: tall and gangly, with giant hands and feet, he was also cursed with a protuberant proboscis and razor-like teeth, which prompted one friend to dub him the 'crane'. Despite being a highly strung hypochondriac prone to 'passport panic', he was remarkably well travelled, though he sounds like a tiresome companion.

In 1857, he stayed with Charles Dickens at the latter's home in Gad's Hill, Kent. Following Andersen's departure, Dickens posted the following note on his bedroom door: 'Hans Andersen slept in this room for five weeks - which seemed to the family AGES.'

Andersen was also terrified he might die in a fire so carried a nine-metre rope in his trunk on his travels to escape from any building. I was in Copenhagen in 2005 (to track down the main songwriter of Danish band Gangway), the 200th anniversary of Andersen's birth, and was happy to see his travelling case displayed in the airport.

Making a Killing

In the absence of Wallander and a brief but enjoyable introduction to Zen, may I point fans of detective drama with a strong lead (character) in the direction of BBC4's The Killing, which is also available on iPlayer. Sofie Gråbøl, pictured, stars as the head of a team investigating the drowning of a young woman, as if Twin Peaks had served as the inspiration for this latest import. Made in Denmark, its rhythms and atmosphere are (very slightly) reminiscent of Lars von Trier's haunting - haunted - hospital drama The Kingdom, Danish dialogue notwithstanding. The introduction of a politician and his cronies into the mix may have been a little more nuanced but otherwise The Killing displays an admirable interest for the ripple effect of a murder on investigators, victims and suspects alike. No doubt this will help it sustain a 20-episode run.

UPDATE At past the halfway point, the series continues to grip, not least because it's so filmic; I fear the prospect of catching up on 12 episodes may be beyond most newcomers, though the BBC is very sensibly keeping them all on iPlayer. Before The Killing began, the Guardian focused on its female lead but the series is remarkable for its portrayal of powerful women at all levels of the drama: there's intuitive detective Sarah Lund; Pernille Birk Larsen, mother of the young woman whose death is the action's catalyst; luscious Rie Skovgaard, steely press spokeswoman for politician Troels Hartmann, who is heavily implicated in the crime and, of course, Nanna Birk Larsen, the murder victim who haunts every revelation with her Laura Palmer-like presence. The men with whom they interact are mere shadows in thrall to these formidable characters.

Related: Sofie Gråbøl on the writer of The Killing