My approach to season two of Borgen will be different that previously attempting to concentrate on the individual personal stories and then adding the personal life information of the Prime Minister Birgitte and her family as well as of Kasper her media Director and Katrine the dedicate journalist with integrity who has moved from the TV station One rather like our BBC One where she and Kasper once worked together for a short time to working for Hanne Holm to the Express scandal sheet directed by the former leader of the labour Party on a mission to destroy the Prime Minister who he has come to hate, after Birgitte rejected his attempt to outwit and force her to accept him as Prime Minister after she had been appointed to try and form a new coalition cabinet.
It will be recalled that on becoming the Prime Minister Birgitte had quickly discovered how much of her time had to be devoted to the job so that even when home she was reading paper or thinking about the latest issues which required her attention. At first her teenage daughter appeared the most well adjusted to the situation and it as her son and then her husband who reacted badly, the son with wetting himself and not wanting to go to school, to an extent that towards the end of the first year there ware days when she had her son at the office with her being cared for by others and even in this instance she brings him in once more to her office as she is taking him for a medical appointment later that morning.
In the second season after the separation with her husband has taken place, the boy makes it plain he wants increasingly to be with his father and situation comes to a head after the husband discloses that he is now in a serious ongoing relationship and wants to introduce the children to his new woman.
Birgitte reacts emotionally to the request for them to meet the woman on a visit to the pictures but then changes her mind, spends time tidying the house and herself only for the husband to agree the time is not right and they should meet casually rather than formally in the first instance
This happens when she is in the midst of unclogging the sink after washing her hair which is still wet. She then agrees to the children staying with him and the woman when he is on a four day visit to see his/her parents before Christmas which they are spending with her this first year. She receives a call from her daughter at one point when in the background she can hear the noise of her son having a great time and it is evident that both children get on very well with the woman who despite having a career has the time for home cooking, something which Birgitte rarely has the time to do, arranging for home delivered meals which son Magnus in particular rejects.
Birgitte is also resistant to signing the divorce papers and admit to her husband that she does not want them to part in such a definite way, but common sense and reality prevails and eventually she signs, signalling acceptance of position and her need to adjust to a new era as a single and desirable comparatively young woman once more. Late one night with the sink still blocked (presumably she has forgotten to stock up with a sink unblocker the young driver calls with an important letter which requires her immediate signature and they end up in bed. Kasper arranges for him to move to another ministry and to keep his mouth shut. However this is not the end of the matter.
In the third of the four episodes the Cabinet is preoccupied with finding greater priority on education and this mean finding the required funds from another budget and the plan is to wind back what had been a policy to introduce early retirement for everyone paying the state pension at an earlier age if individuals wished to retire early. The cabinet are to hold a much published seminar in a residential hotel to working out the policies and details consequential to the plan but at the last moment the leader, a man good man from the trade union movement but not a leader, but who had beaten the ambitious number two and subsequent Minister of Justice insisted on having only a professional relationship because of his machinations in relation to the bugging of another governing Coalition party and the current Minister for equality.
He and other members of the Labour Party demanding that they have time out to hold a Party meeting stopping the Seminar in its tracks just after it commences, They then make the announcement that the leader has resigned with the former Minister of Justice taking over as interim leader which is subsequently confirmed. The seminar is postponed but as it is late in the day a number of participants, including some of the media remain at the hotel.
This includes the new leader of the Labour party who Katrine, attending with Hanne Holm for the Express spots talking to the temporary photographer as an intern attached to the regular man. We the audience appreciate the previous allegations about the Leader being homosexual within his marriage with children, a homosexual with an interest in young men. We the audience see him go to the room of the new Leader and that someone else is taking photos from outside the hotel at the uncovered and lit window.
Katrine is also distracted as Kasper despite having a established a relationship with a beautiful loving young woman is still in love with her and sexually attracted so they have great sex when after a rebuff to his advances he goes to her room and they passionately embrace. They have sex again the following day but Katrine makes it clear that this changes nothing about the impossibility of their relationship.
In part because of this and in part because of the demands from is position as the Director of Communications for the Prime Minister, his partner senses that he is not with her when they are together, in the same way experienced at first and questions if he still wants to move in with her. He confirms his wish and previously he had explained that he had few possession, spinning the tale that he had something with his parents who lived in the South of France despite the death of his father and his mother living in Denmark. I cannot remember the time sequence but at one point Katrine is musing to Hanne about being 31 without a husband and children and having gone backwards in her career compared to that of Hanne. Kasper arrange with his girl friend to celebrate the birthday with Katrine with a meal out, and they are joined by Hanne for he occasion although Kasper still arrives late home.
In the fourth of the four first episodes of the second season, the former Labour Leader tells Brigitte and Hanne to publish the story of the new Labour Leader having sex with a young man on the grounds that being bisexual is something he had denied and kept from his wife and children. The two female journalists are not happy with the story and feel something is not right given that their boss has previously pressed them to smear the politician who had taken his position from him. They notice that the photographs the published are only part of a set and therefore when the boss is occupied in a meeting with Hanne, Katrine uses the password supplied by Hanne to check his computer and gains access to all the photos which reveal that the participant is none other than the intern. They make further investigations and discover that the young man works as a male escort and get him to visit Katrine with Hanne and force him to disclose that he was hired by the former Labour Leader Michael Laugesen on the understanding that his face would not be disclosed.
Having gathered the evidence they confront Laugesen and demand the stops the story. When he refuse they resign and while he admits Katrine will get another job he tells Hanne she will not. He then takes great delight in meeting with Hoxenhausen and advising him that the photos accompanying an article will be released the following morning, Hoxenhausen goes to see the Prime Minister and she recognises the harm this could do to the Party as well as to the man and his family and advises that this does not necessarily mean the end of his career if he breaks the information first and goes immediately to alert his wife and children. He is appreciative of the response of the Prime Minister given the way he has behaved to keep his position and to try and replace her as Prime Minister. However he cannot tell his wife and children or cope with the media attention that will follow, He is found in his car dead having taken an overdose of sleeping pills taken from the private bathroom of the Prime Minister. Birgitte then demands to see Laugesen and warns him to stop the adverse publicity about the dead man or she will reveal that he framed the former politician. However while Laugesen knows he has been beaten he also mentions that he knows about her and the official Chauffer who contrary to his promise to Kasper has told th story to the former Labour Leader.
The second political story in the second season concerns the need to appoint a new Danish Commissioner for Europe and if the person is of the right calibre the allocation of an important Ministerial position. The best person is her former trusted adviser an Financial Minister Bent who early and in the run and at the commencement of the second year had warned that she could not afford political friends and that to gain continuing Labour support she would have to agree with whatever demands they made. Their price was the scalp of Bent which he took hard but still remained powerful the party’s deputy chairperson but now he tended to disagreed with everything Birgitte wanted to do and vice versa. She decides that he is the best person for the European position and where the post pays double that of the Prime Minister. However he angrily rejects the offer saying she wants to get him out of the way, In fact separate his wife comes to visit to plead with her not to appointment him because she now sees more of him and he is a much less stressed person.
She then offers the position to Kruse, the up and coming young minister and a protégée friend of Bent from her party and who is the Europe Minister in the cabinet. He declines saying he wants to play his role at home as Denmark is to chair the European commission for six months coming up shortly. He real motive is wanting to build up his popularity and support base for a leadership bid at the appropriate time. He offers to try and persuade Bent to reconsider and she is delighted when in the last hours before the arranged announcement and presentation of the nomination Bent agrees, However he collapses and is rushed to hospital. It then emerges that Bent’s wife had told Kruse that her husband already had an embolism the previous she which he had kept quiet and why she had pleaded that he should not be offered the position, The Prime Minister then insists that Kruse take the appointment of European Commissioner.
I would also mention that that in the fourth episode there us another power Battle over the position for Prime Minister when a Danish cargo vessel is hijacked and Danish seaman kidnapped. Traditionally the PM take the lead and decisions in such a situation but everything is done to take the initiative away from her but she outwits and arranges for a Danish special forces unit to rescue the kidnapped having established they are board the hijacked vessel as it can be stopped by a Danish Warship before reaching port.
The series opened with a moving story about the involvement of the Danish government in the war on terror in Afghanistan and where the Taliban are having their onslaught on allied forces in order to force an earlier withdrawal than announced and before the Afghans have been adequately prepared to provide for their own security. Birgitte is on a visit with Kasper but they have to quickly leave when a patrol from the Danish base is blown up with more casualties in a day tan previously. Now a short whole beforehand an eighteen year old had been photographed with the Prime Minister.
Also visiting the base is Katrine and a photographer with their paper having arranged for them to be embedded but because of the deteriorating situation they are also forced to leave for the homeland early.
Birgitte and her Party and the Greens had been opposed to Danish military involvement in the conflict supported the earliest possible withdrawal. However now she is getting conflicting pressure with the Military saying they should not appear to be yielding to pressure which would reinforce the position of the Taliban and add more pressure on everyone making the situation even more dangerous, a view which is that of the United State and most other supporting European member states
Katrine wants to do a story about the impact of the death on the families and goes to the father of the young man photographed with the Prime Minister, and who refuses to hand over the letter the young man will have written in the event or to say anything that it senseless and he did not understand or forgive his son for joining up and go to Afghanistan. The Prime Minister appears to be supported by the Liberal Leader Hesselboe but who in fact outsmarts and wants her to send in more men and better equipped. Because her Cabinet is divided it appears she is not to attend a meeting with bereaved parents when it has been arranged for them to meet political Leaders. She sees the local army commander she met on the visit to Afghanistan back with the bodies of the killed young men and asks him what he wants and this has the effect of getting her to go to the meeting with the families where the father of the young boy gives her the photo of the two and says it is senseless, The Prime Minister sees him and her is persuaded to read the letter the by has written, after which he gives to Katrine to publish and her story goes out with the headline 96000 children.
This is a quote from the letter in which he young man says sorry to his father because it means that he has did, he says he remains the happy go lucky young seeking adventurer but he does not regret his actions because there 96000 more children alive than there would have been and because of the schools opened with girls also being able to attend. Birgitte has also met representatives of he NGO’s, Non Government Organisations including a woman who draws attention to the things she can do which were forbidden under Taliban rule. Birgitte then announces that she has decided to send more troops with more and better equipment to the agreement of the majority of those in parliament and in the country at large.
She has com full circle in confronting the challenges of the realities of day to day politics as Prime Minister and Party leader of a coalition with the idealism and principles which brought her into to politic and to join the Moderate party.
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