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 and the fear of being found out

I had some great feedback for my post in which The Killing star Sofie Gråbøl speaks about her admiration for the series' writer, Søren Sveistrup, so here are her thoughts about acting. She fell into acting while working in a Copenhagen hotel aged 17 and feels, for a time, it was something she pursued despite never having made a conscious decision to become an actor. She obviously did well but it was only when she freed herself from other people's expectations that she could call herself an actor...

'It wasn’t something I had felt or wished for and then tried to achieve, I just hopped on a train that passed me. Everyone said to me you should go to theatre school, you should be an actor shouldn’t you, and then suddenly I started feeling this pressure somehow. I lost myself in that and I got this great fear of applying for theatre school because what if I didn’t get in, then it was all bluff.

'I think a lot of artists have this feeling of bluffing - [that] somebody is going to come and reveal us and say, you’re not allowed to be here, you’re not good enough. Finally I applied for the school and I didn’t get in, and it was somehow a big relief. It was like people's expectations -what I had dreaded the most - happened, and I felt so relieved I was able to feel my own needs and wishes, and I really wanted to be an actor. I just worked, I started doing theatre as well.'

After a considerable wait, The Killing II begins on BBC4 Saturday 19 November.

Five things I'm looking forward to this autumn

ART

Tate Modern's Gerhard Richter: Panorama promises to be a major retrospective of the 80-year-old German artist, to rival MoMA's 40-year survey in New York one decade ago. From 6 Oct 2011-8 Jan 2012.

Look out also for Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement, at the Royal Academy 17 Sept-11 Dec, the V&A's latest blockbuster, Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990, which opens 24 Sept to 25 Jan, plus Tacita Dean takes over Tate Modern's Turbine Hall from 11 Oct.

BOOKS
Haruki Murakami's last big novel, Kafka on the Shore, disappointed despite its heft. Seven years on, the cult author's latest, 1Q84, was so well-received in Japan, he added a third volume to the work's original two parts. They're released here in two books on 18 & 25 Oct respectively.

FILM
Swedish director Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In) tackles John Le Carré's classic novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy with a rattling cast, which includes John Hurt, Tom Hardy and Benedict Cumberbatch, headed up by Gary Oldman (released 16 Sept).

Hurt also stars in the latest from Danish provocateur Lars von Trier, Melancholia, alongside Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Rampling, in cinemas from 30 Sept. Other stand-outs this month include Nicolas Winding Refn's James Sallis adaptation, Drive (23 Sept), and Mademoiselle Chambon (same date), with Sandrine Kimberlain and Vincent Lindon as a couple suddenly drawn to each other. Lynne Ramsay's take on the Lionel Shriver novel We Need to Talk About Kevin opens 21 Oct, boasting a stand-out performance from Tilda Swinton.

MUSIC
I haven't been excited about a new album by Björk for some time, but Biophilia sees the Icelandic pop pixie embracing nature, and technology. Out 10 Oct.

One year after Dust Lane, it looks as if Yann Tiersen is back with a new album, Skyline (pictured), out second half of October. Then there's Erasure entering Tomorrow's World, from 3 Oct.

TV
Danish crime drama The Killing was the cult hit of the winter, and I can't wait for the arrival of follow-up The Killing II on BBC4. Star Sofie Gråbøl promises the 10-episode series is even darker than the first.

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)

A new Lund

Those suffering withdrawal since the end of triumphant Danish TV series The Killing, may be tempted to check out Swedish detective Irene Huss, based on writer Helene Tursten's character. An introduction for English-language thriller fans comes in publisher Soho Crime's Detective Inspector Huss. The cover to the 2003 edition brands it 'Sweden's Prime Suspect', though no doubt the dabs of Scandinavia's finest, Sarah Lund, would be all over the book if it were published now.

Forty-year-old Irene Huss is admittedly less of a mess than lovely Lund - Huss is a judo-practising, happily married mother of teen twin girls. The crime is different, too: a wealthy businessman falls to his death from his apartment block, although there is the ever-present interference from superiors on such a sensitive case.

The bleak Göteborg atmosphere compares with the Copenhagen of The Killing, then there is Huss's dress sense: 'black jeans, down-filled poplin jacket, and […] red wool sweater'. There is a Lund here, Huss's colleague Håkan, who brims with initiative.

A procedural in the style of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö's Martin Beck series (also set in Sweden), there's the occasional nice change of perspective: 'Since the major renovation a few years ago, Göteborg's Central Station is quite a beautiful place to visit. The dark, polished woodwork of the walls, benches, and pillars creates a turn-of-the-twentieth-century atmosphere. But the crowded flow of travelers, the stoned junkies, and the the winos asleep on the benches are the same as always. The ticket line is the same too, even if nowadays it's computerized with little paper numbers and digital displays above each ticket window.'

A (Swedish) TV series of Detective Inspector Huss mysteries kicked off in 2007 - the slightly grim trailer for the first instalment is here - starring Angela Kovács (pictured), who was also a regular in the Krister Henriksson Wallander series, currently rescreening on BBC4. Six new 90-minute episodes of Irene Huss are due to air in Sweden this autumn - worth picking up, anyone?

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