Episodes 17 and 18 of season two of the Danish political drama Borgen can be considered the two most important of the entire three season series which I have experienced to date, and for the second time late on the evening of November 22nd, 2013. They can be viewed on a stand alone basis and their significance can still be appreciated as a drama of a high quality in scripting and acting but they become that much more richer when one has experienced all the previous 16 episodes then ideally experienced in a concentrated viewing session as I have done over the past ten days and the viewing marathon is not yet over.
I have decided to write up these two of the last four episodes viewed last night, allowing myself a maximum of three hours to complete the task before lunch and setting off to experience my first live football match since the end of the season three years ago at St James Park as Newcastle now firmly established in the top half of the middle of table, In fact on reflection I need to go earlier to the city in order to obtain a passport size set of photographs, presumably from to city post office if I can remember where it is. I check the computer over a breakfast of two large mushrooms seasoned with white pepper and a porridge with apple and cherry, My first port of call will be boots in the Boots in Eldon square. It is going to prove and engaging weekend. Which merits an immoderate write up but I will postpone until later
Birgitte Nyborg, the first female Prime Minister of Denmark has survived several attempts to topple her Coalition government when she is asked to hold a secret meeting with the head of the country’s biggest industrial concern with world wide interests including the development of oilfields in an African country on the verge of all out civil war. Birgitte first encountered the industrialist who plays bridge regularly with the Queen and also takes afternoon tea, when the coalition introduced legislation to insists that 45% if board members of companies were female. She had persuaded him to take the lead in implanting th initiative and won his respect for so doing. The purpose of his visit was to try and persuade the Prime Minister to attempt to bring about a peace settlement between the two men and their supporters and armies engaged in a struggle over their different views of the country.
We all know that his kind of the behind the scenes influencing clout goes on and although the visits may be recorded it would be surprising if the chat is witnessed and fully recorded. Oh for another Nixon!
The official ruler of the African state in question controlled the capital city and the rest of the north together with the oil pipeline to the coast supplying 7% of the energy required by the 1.5 Billion Chinese economy. The leaders is an Arab speaking middle East Muslim whereas the black leader in the south wanted independence for his largely Christian population and an appropriate share of the oil revenues. As the Prime Minister is subsequently advised the Northern leader speaks perfect English and was educated at Cambridge but will only speak to her in Arabic while the Christian in South is intolerant towards homosexuals boasting there are no homosexuals in my country, apparently having killed anyone known.
Both men are reported to have engaged in atrocities although the Northern Leader has been indicted for war crimes at the Hague. Despite all the concern for the plight of the ordinary citizens caught up in the power struggle the UN is powerless to intervene because the USA is not interested enough to exert pressure on the south or the Chinese on the north. Despite the brave effort of the Norwegians to broker peace between Israel and Palestine interests in the past the request of the industrial for her coalition government to intervene looks no more that a futile attempt to get her to help protect his financial interests,
Meanwhile the extreme right wing party has been playing up the issue of immigration and continuing to demand greater controls and for repatriation and fears the coalition with again open its doors to the plight of the refugees from the African country, Birgitte reminds that as the twelfth richest nation in the world they have a duty to offer assistance to the less fortunate. She begins to think that help to preventing a civil war will have political advantages at home as well as a humanitarian solution for the people of the country in question. The interesting aspect of even this character is that is oft speaks truths about the lack of representation of those who hold the views he espouses and the way the lives of many have been turned upside down and marginalized by the decisions of many world leaders to turn their countries into multi cultural and multinational communities in attempt to break down the nationalistic and tribal tendencies which have caused significant bloodshed although it can be argued that the search for more energy to fuel the industrialization of economies and for cheap labour to create the infrastructure and develop manufacturing has been a as or even a greater cause for the conflicts as race and religion now appears to be.
To say that her Ministers, civil servants and media director Kasper are not enthusiastic about her consideration of intervening as a means of avoid the challenge of another exodus which would create genuine problems in her country as well as political ones is a great understatement. Having decide to make the effort Birgitte persuades the Industrialist to give support at once with helping to bring the parties to the point of discussing a peace process with her and to give public support through his newspaper and TV interests if the venture is not successful. Her approach impresses him even more than previously.
She brings back past foreign Minister and personal friend Bent who with aid of a stick, pills and a respirator is back to his energetic and supportive self to assist in organising and planning the peace process. She also needs an Arabic speaking Muslim and immediately thinks of the former leader of the Green Party Amir, the former environmentalist Minister in her government.
In the 15th episode and first of the quartet under review his party refuse to compromise over her attempt to pass legislation committing the country to achieving a number of environmental targets including the reduction of emissions in a way which will achieve an across the board consensus so that the objectives of the legislation will be achieved whoever is in power in the future.
This involves her in meetings with all the political parties and she makes progress in relation to the Liberals and the New Right but this involves significant concessions although not with the extreme right who demand more for pensioners and less taxation but also tougher action on crime and immigration. The leader of the Green Party Amir is however adamant they will not compromise and Birgitte comments to Kasper that he is not a team player. I believe it is Kasper who alerts her to the fact that Amir is a classic car enthusiast and has imported a gas guzzling vehicle from the USA. She OK‘s Kasper releasing this to the media as pressure to bring him in line but the situation snowballs out of control when it is learned that he used the vehicle significantly more than he first admitted. His family suffer abuse and when he expresses concern about this aspect of the situation, Birgitte admits she was responsible and offers to call of the pressure if he agrees to the comprise. He does and the legislation is passed but at a high price as the Greens pull out of the coalition and the Prime Minister has to use all her skills to continue as a Minority coalition having to gain sufficient votes for each piece of new legislation at a time. She reminds the leader of the Liberal party the this is how he governed for several years. Amir resigns not only from the leadership of the party and his Ministerial position, but from parliament. The Prime Minister regrets that gaining the kind of agreement she felt was needed has result in the loss of a good man and politician for top level politics.
Now the Prime Minister’s motorcade draws up outside his modest home where he happens to be working in the garden to ask him to help the peace process. He declines but then changes his mind and joins the planning meeting being held in the office of the Prime Minister. They decide to make a three day secret visit to th African country to invite the two leaders to come of Denmark to negotiate a peace settlement. The trip is to be made in secret with Kasper remaining home and helping to field requests for direct contact with the PM or information about here activities and whereabouts. The story giving is that she is having a private meeting with her opposite number in France although Hanne Home comments to Katrine the former TV journalists now working again for the TV 1 Public broadcasting station after their stint at the Express newspaper controlled by the former leader of the Labour Party that it is odd as the French counterpart is also supposed to be out of his country on an official visit.
Hanne as predicted by the former Labour Party leader Michael Laugesen could not get a job anywhere after she and Katrine refused to ahead with a story smearing the former Minister of Justice Hoxenhaven for as she points Laugesen was on the board of the other main TV channel and drank wine with the editors of all other newspapers once a month. Katrine Fonsmark who he admits would find work because of her popularity fronting news programmes from TV 1 where she had also walked out on an issue of principle has been forced to take a job with TV 1 station hosting a show which reunites families together a kind of Surprise Surprise. However her former News department boss visits and invites her to take over her old position for six months because of maternity leave by her replacement. She accepts but on the condition that Hanne returns with her in a reversal of roles on a part time basis. He reluctantly agrees. The job involves her working as a reporter as well as News programme front woman. The two women are approached by a photographer they previously know with photos of the arrival of the Industrialist at the Prime Ministers apartment which is also in the same part of he building in which the Queen also has her official apartment. The photographer points out that there was no meeting listed and suggests this is suspicious.
I cannot remember the precise sequence of events that leads the two women to take an interest in the activities of the front man of the industrialist who has been working in the African country of concern and which directly leads to their positive involvement in the peace process but a photography of the man with one of the butchers involved in village clearance to enable oilfield expansion leads then to confront the man who offers to meet them at th studio to explain further his role but does not turn up and goes into hiding, but is brought out into the limelight with threat of a programme feature. He continues to deny involved in anything illegal and morally indefensible but admits any public allegation would seriously undermine confidence in his role which is essentially a behind the scenes one and he offers to provide them significant information if they are prepared to drop inquiries in relation to his role.
How Katrine gets to know the Prime Minister is visiting the African country is even more of a long story. First she meets Kasper Jual, the Prime Ministers spin doctor one morning when he is with his new partner ordering a smoothie and the two women are introduced to each other, While his partner gets a table he tells his former partner Katrine that he wants to kiss her,
Later he is approached by a junior member of the press corps who works in another government media office with whom he has and a previous encounter and they have sex largely at her instigation twice over a couple of days. However she the contacts Kasper’s latest partner at home on the basis that she is now his new girl friend and this leads to the break up of the relationship with his new partner. He is alone again when he meets Katrine in her role again for the TV station and says that he loves her while she insists there is question of them getting back together while he continues to refuse to keep part of his early life secret from her. This comes out in the 15th episode when Kasper nearly looses in job after making a number of outbursts at the extreme right wing leader who wants to lower the age of criminal responsibility from 14 to 12 citing the British position of 10 years.
The right wing leader Bernedikte Nedergaard of the Freedom Party begins to get the population on his side as well as members of the Labour Party in the coalition when he is attacked and his arm severely injured by a group of young people. There are those who believe he went looking for trouble but Nyborg in responding to his request for her to be interviewed at the parliament over his bill to lower the age of criminal responsibility and is emotionally outraged when she accuses him of knowing nothing about children when in fact he lost his daughter in a drowning accident when she was 12. She echoes the plea of Kasper that they should not rob children of their childhood and greater long term problems by bringing children into the criminal justice system. She manages to win th vote by the narrowest of margins.
In this episode Kasper does not reveal the reasons for his outburst to the Prime Minister but later to Katrine. He is selling up the property of his mother who has entered into a residential home and wants the task completed as quickly as possible. The agent passes on to him a box which his mother insists he should have. It will also be remembered that the two had passionate sex also over a short period when the seminar on changing social security priorities to devote more resources to education had to be postponed because of the labour party changes in leadership. Katrine had said pointedly that the experience did not change the fundamental difference between the two which i assume is that he did not want to have children, something which he says with great emotion to his most recent partner, after she said she had wanted to have children with him.
Kasper now visit Katrine and gives her the box passed from his mother. This contains a book of press cutting a video of TV reports and a hunting knife one of four that had been displayed on a wall. We share the great emotion experienced by Katrine as she fully understands the secret, a secret which we had begin to be made aware of when Kasper visited his former family home after the death of his father and again on his visited to sell up the home have its contents cleared included the possessions from his childhood bedroom. Not only had his father sexually abused him as a twelve year old but his father’s card playing and drinking men friends when his other was away from the home. Kasper had wanted to play with the hunting knives but had been refused but then allowed to do so as means of getting his son to keep what was happening from his mother.
Now we know that in his distress the boy had stabbed in father and this had led to his father and the other men being charged and presumable convicted and imprisoned. Kasper had not be been charged with the attempted murder because of his age but had spent time in a reform school. Given the character make up of Katrine the disclosures leads them to become partners once more in a great moving scene in which she shows her deepest felt empathy. However this does not prevent her curiosity when Kasper confirms the story of the Prime Minister being out of the country in France and he temporarily leaves the flat with his briefcase of appears available for to look at and she learns of the secret visit being made to the African country.
Through her combination of charm and political wiles Birgitte is able to persuade both leaders to come to Denmark to negotiate a peace settlement, despite the northern leader first sending an emissary and she threatening to leave the country on a fools errand with all the consequently bad publicity for the north and hen he commences to talk in Arabic although he speaks excellent English.
Getting the two men and their political supporters and officials to come to Demark is only the first step which also involves getting the Hague to suspend its European arrest warrant, One of the side aspects of this double episode is the way the programme communicate the intensity abd breath and depth of such a Peace process and as Birgitte principals Bent and Amir deal with the major issues arise while a team of Danish arbitrators and conciliator hold the ring as number teams negotiate their way through a list of issues which are listed on a white board in the operations room at the PM’s HQ.
There are two developments which threaten to undermine and stop the peace process from achieving a settlement. The first and most significant issue is the discovery that that China has sold 40 attack helicopters to the North, a move which means the North has the power to crush the opposition. The North are revealed to have been stalling all the time not wanting to appear to have been against the Peace Process and lose International support which working on the basis that they would be able to defeat the South and regain control of he whole country. The South understandably want to return home to try and protect their people the best way they can. Everyone is pressed not to return home while the Prime Minister sees the Ambassador to China who although sympathetic to what she is trying to do, says it is too late, However at the last moment there is an announcement that China has turned back the ships, rather like Russia and the Cuban Missile crisis, an event being commented on again as the death of former President John Kennedy is being marked. The decision means the North is forced to continue with the process which takes longer than anticipated leaving all those participating exhausted.
The second development involves the research undertaken by Katrine and Hanne into the activities of the front man for the Danish Industrialist in the African Country. He offers to provide the two with significant information if they agree to a contracted undertaking to drop their information and interest in his activities. The detailed information which includes a break down of he oil accounts is that the North has been cheating the south of its due oil revenues by 10%.
The Prime Minister invites the two journalists to a meeting at which they shown the work being undertaken and the implications for the peace process. The two women then persuade the programme director to drop the story altogether if the peace process succeeds. When the North leader attempts further or fabrication in the hope of ending the process so the Chinese will relent and provide the military might for him to achieve all his original objectives she uses the knowledge gained from the Katrine and Hanne to blackmail him into cooperation. The two men are seen to shake hands on the deal at a media conference and the Prime Minister is acclaimed world wide and within Demark for putting the county on the political success map. Things could not appear to be going any better for the Prime Minister, and then her world comes crashing down all over again.
In previous notes I have explained how the relationship between Birgitte and her husband came to break down and her attempts to save the relationship finally accepting the situation, agreeing to the divorce and developing relationship with her husband and his new partner which involve creating an open and friendly atmosphere to enables the children to spend time with both parents, although because of the intensity and nature of her role they come to spend more time with their father and partner than they do with Birgitte although she employs a nanny to help her and the children. The nanny moves in while l she is away from home during the visit to Africa and her involvement in subsequent peace process, given that she has all her other government, Parliamentary and political roles to perform.
The boy Magnus appears to have well adjusted to the situation although earlier he was showing disturbance at the loss of attention from his mother. It is now the older daughter to comes into focus as she refuses to attend the annual holiday camp with other teenagers. Birgitte puts her daughter‘s difficult behaviour due to adolescence. She in effect forces the girl to attend the camp and keep in touch by phone. However as the peace process commences the girl attempts to ring her mother and is rebuffed by the official secretary who has replaced Sanne the young woman Birgitte and wanted to replaced but grew to appreciate despite her lapse had a kind and thoughtful heart and got on well with the children. When the school responsible for the camp are also unable to get into contact with her they attempt to contact the father who is also away and it is left to his partner to collect the young woman who in turn advises Birgitte at the earliest opportunity. The young woman has had an emotional breakdown and attack.
Arrangements are made for the girl to see a psychiatrist and he like the new partner of the former husband recommend a course of anti depressant to enable the talking with the girl to work. Birgitte is not happy about her daughter taking “happy pills” nor is the girl herself and when Birgitte is involved with the peace visit and subsequent negotiations her daughter parents to take the tablet and then spits out, When her brother discovers what she is doing he is bullied into silence with the inevitable consequence that she breaks down into a psychotic state and is rushed to hospital when the occultist explains that often you g women refuse to take the tablets in an attempt to keep some control over their lives but the impact of the sudden withdrawal leaves them ill and in a dangerous situation. He impresses on the parents that their will have to be major changes if their daughter is to get better,
While they reflect on the information and situation a TV in the hospital waiting area reports on the success of the conference and the enhanced standing of the Prime Minister. This segment of programme could be described as the price to be paid.
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