I had a hard time getting excited about the original Borgen, the one on Danish TV nine years ago. Where many smelled Shakespeare, I only smelled something rotten in Denmark, but really, no quotes from Hamlet. I used to watch a small series, a regional chain soap opera. Everything in it seemed fake and sounded childish, and I was even scared that some politicians would identify with the plots: without having a very noble idea of politics, I hoped that reality would be somewhat less seedy.
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But the series are habit, like friendship, and what seems ridiculous at first, in the third season is nice. It was that ingenuity and those approaches to school function that made me fall in love: Borgen was the playmobil version of The West Wing of the White House. An elementary Aaron Sorkin, without subordinate phrases.
Unfortunately, Netflix’s new Borgen carries the grandiloquence in the subtitle (Kingdom, power and glory) and sustains it even in the landscape. They have gone to shoot in Greenland and they have filled everything with beautiful ancient ice. The characters wear long shots. They no longer look like provincial deputy vice presidents, now they are like statesmen, and even their houses are cooler. Hell, they even walk with more style. Everything exudes that glamor of power and ambition, that latency of iambic verse. The scripts suppurate maxims of classical oratory. I am two episodes away from believing that politics has erotics.
Luckily the debates of the Andalusian elections lower me to the ground, to that ground covered with sawdust on which the candidates walk their mediocrity. Fortunately, the arrogance of Juanma Moreno or the surrogate actress diction of the bad witch of the west of Macarena Olona appear to remind us, as a public service, that the smell of rottenness is not exclusive to Denmark.
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