The Bridge (TV series)

Bron|Broen (the former title is Swedish and the latter Danish), known in English-speaking markets as The Bridge, is a thriller co-produced by the national TV companies of Denmark and Sweden. The first series was shown in its native countries in 2011, and in 2012 followed Forbrydelsen onto BBC 4 in the UK. A second season has been confirmed in Scandinavia, while remakes are being looked at in both the US (with Mexico) and the UK (with France)

The series begins when discovered on the Øresund bridge that links Copenhagen (Denmark) with Malmö (Sweden), carefully dumped at the exact point where the bridge is divided by the international border. As a result, the two cities' police forces are forced to collaborate on the investigation, led by Saga Norén (Sweden) and Martin Rohde (Denmark). Threatening messages are then received by the police and media, from somebody purporting to have committed the murders to draw attention to social problems.

"Rohde: [Saga] doesn't do jokes."
 * Alone with the Psycho: Several times.
 * Ambiguous Disorder: Saga. The actor and writers have said that she probably is autistic/Asperger in some way, but that they didn't explicitly state it to keep their freedom of writing without offending/misleading people.
 * Best Served Cold
 * Bilingual Dialogue: All the dialogue is in either Danish or Swedish depending on who's talking.
 * The languages are mutually intelligible - Rohde asks his Swedish counterparts if they can understand his Danish.
 * By-The-Book Cop: Saga takes her duties very seriously. After finding a store camera that could have useful evidence on it, she gets the camera's memory card - and then mentions that the store-owner doesn't actually have permission for the camera.
 * Can Not Tell a Lie: Saga is frequently noted as being a terrible liar, which she is trying to improve. Naturally, this becomes vitally important in the finale.
 * Crazy Homeless People: Sonja
 * Criminal Mind Games
 * Dead Little Sister: Saga's sister killed herself at some point in the past.
 * Deadly Gas
 * Defective Detective: An Odd Couple of them; a By-The-Book Cop Swede with No Social Skills and a laid-back Dane who Really Gets Around.
 * Do You Want to Copulate?: If Saga wants to have sex with someone, she doesn't beat around the bush. No pun intended.
 * Dysfunction Junction: All the significant characters are so screwed up that you'll start thinking the killer has a point.
 * Exact Words: Saga, who Can Not Tell a Lie, tries to reassure Martin by telling him that . After she repeats that exact wording a couple of times, the killer points out that she's not saying
 * External Combustion
 * Faking the Dead
 * Fan Disservice: This being a Scandinavian show, there's a lot of casual nudity (especially involving Saga, Stefan and Sonja), but the style of the shots is so clinical and the events sometimes so disturbing that it's rarely erotic.
 * Groin Attack: The killer kicking Rohde in the balls, possibly because he knows that Rohde just had a vasectomy.
 * Hand of Death: The show likes depicting the killer as a pair of gloved hands driving a car to the next crime scene.
 * Headphones Equal Isolation: August.
 * Hope Spot:
 * I Can Still Fight:
 * Incredibly Obvious Bomb:
 * Infant Immortality:
 * Insane Troll Logic: The killer wants to draw attention to the plight of the vulnerable in society, by murdering them in incredibly cruel and gruesome ways.
 * It's Personal:
 * Jerk with a Heart of Jerk:
 * Jurisdiction Friction: Part of the initial hype for the show, and possibly hoped for by the killer. But actually the two police forces work together pretty well, barring some arguments over who gets to carry a gun
 * Keeping Secrets Sucks: Saga complains about being asked to keep Martin' secret
 * Kick the Son of a Bitch: Ferbé's introductory scene, where he viciously mocks a sad-sack colleague for his unhipness and taste in music, makes him appear so unpleasant that the unspeakably horrible things that happen to him immediately afterwards seem karmic and comical.
 * Limited Wardrobe: We hope that Saga has several identical pairs of black leather trousers. If not, she probably isn't very pleasant to be around.
 * Looking for Love In All the Wrong Places
 * Magic Plastic Surgery:
 * Mailer Daemon:
 * Murder.Com: The two "Truth Terrorist" sites, one for each country.
 * Murderer POV: The start.
 * National Stereotypes: Plays throughout with stereotypes of the Swedish as uptight and Danes as laidback.
 * No Shirt, Long Jacket: Sonja throughout the first couple of episodes.
 * No Sense of Humor
 * No Sense of Humor


 * No Social Skills: Saga. Played sometimes seriously,, and sometimes comically.
 * Porn Stache: Stefan the Swedish social worker.
 * Running Gag: Saga's boss explaining "She meant to say 'How are you?'", Martin's insistence that Saga needs a hobby, and the Swedes waking Martin up early in the morning while he's sleeping.
 * Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere: Two variations are used in the finale, for, and for.
 * Shoot Your Mate:.
 * Start to Corpse
 * Strike Me Down with All of Your Hatred:
 * Theme Serial Killer
 * Turn in Your Badge: Briefly discussed and defied; once the case becomes personal for Rohde, it's suggested that he be taken off it. He matter-of-factly states that if he is, he'll just keep investigating on his own time, so he's kept on.
 * You Have Outlived Your Usefulness:
 * Your Cheating Heart: Martin is a serial case. He's gone through several marriages because of it, and his current one is on the rocks, but it really comes back to haunt him when it turns out