The Border on TV: What’s so Fascinating about Crimes at the Border? (film review)

Abstract

The Danish-Swedish co-production Broen (The Bridge) has created a new format of crime shows on television in two ways. It is a fictional story of a single crime spread out to ten episodes of one hour, and it plays with the border phenomenon and crossborder police cooperation. Broen has so far had four seasons, first aired on Danish and Swedish TV from 2011 (season 1) to 2018 (season 4), translating into four crimes. The series’ success has resulted in a direct US-Mexican and a UK-French remake and some “me-too” spin-offs as the Finnish Bordertown series or the German-Polish investigation team set in the real-life joint Polish-German police center on the border at Swiecko-Frankfurt (Oder) of the Polizeiruf 110 series.