Norway is where the series had the highest scores, with 631,000 viewers on NRK and a 39% share of the audience. In Sweden the first episode had 1,220,000 viewers on SVT for a 34 per cent share against 818,000 viewers on DR for a 35% share. Two days before the premiering on SVT and DR we spoke to the TV drama’s main writer, the Swede Hans Rosenfeldt.
The first episode of The Bridge Season 2 premieres simultaneously on SVT and DR on Sunday and one day after on NRK. How does it feel to have millions of Scandis watching your show at the same time?
Hans Rosenfeldt: It feels good. I think it’s very smart for the two big producers SVT and DR to air it pretty much at the same time, then for NRK it also makes sense because today, a lot of Norwegians can watch Swedish television.
The Bridge is an amazing success story. What is your own analysis of why millions of people around the world were glued to the series and liked the characters, including the dysfunctional Swedish female police officer Saga (played by Sofia Helin)? I read in some audience analysis that although she put some people off after the first episode, others really grew to like her and she actually became one of the selling points for the show…
HR: I totally agree with you. We could see this in the ratings in Sweden. We lost a few viewers after the first episode, but we saw that those who actually stuck to the series talked to the other viewers and said you should watch this again because it’s good. After episode four it turned around and the show started to rate better and better. And a big part of it was not because of the plot but because of Saga that people couldn’t relate to. But she grows on you.
Ultimately I think The Bridge is a good show. It’s quite a good plot, you don’t really know where it’s going, and the characters are complex, interesting to be with although they’re not easy to like at the beginning. Visually, it’s also very attractive, typical Scandinavian in the darkness, harshness, and at the same time it’s not too realistic. It’s a little universe of its own which makes it easier to travel.
Were you surprised by the show’s popularity even in subtitling territories?
HR: I was really surprised. Besides the quality of The Bridge, it’s also down to luck and good timing. After The Millennium trilogy, Forbrydelsen and Borgen, everybody was watching the next show coming out of Scandinavia. Even before it was aired in the UK there was a big buzz around it and it eventually got over a million viewers on BBC Four.
Did you have the same writing team as for the first season?
HR: The team is half new, half old. Camilla Ahlgren is a wonderful script editor and she was involved in the episode writing with Nikolaj Scherfig, like in the first season. Then we have one new writer in season two: the Dane Maren Louise Käehnel.
Is it more difficult to write a second season?
HR: It’s harder in the sense that you have to keep the DNA of the series so people will recognise it. People expect to get certain things out of it and you have to deliver them. At the same time, you can’t repeat yourself. So it’s really about finding a balance between being true to the series and not repeating yourself. We do build a new case; we have a different villain that was a bit larger than life in Season One. It will take ten hours again for Saga and Martin to find the killer. It is the same construction as the first season but we develop the main characters a lot more in Season Two as well as the side stories and characters. On the other hand, the easy part is that the audience already knows the main characters. You don’t have to establish them and you can go deeper into their personalities.
How do you actually write a TV series? Do you write while shooting has started to find inspirations from the actors, the mood on the set?
HR: I write on my own because we haven’t finished the script when we start shooting, so I continue writing while they are shooting the first four episodes. I am not on the set, but actors and directors call me if they have questions or ideas for changes. We discuss it the day before the shooting. We then make the changes or keep it as is. It’s about 50/50. I do watch the daily takes. In Season One, the benefit was that we saw that some private scenes between Saga and Martin where they are just chit chatting, not directly discussing the case worked very well with the audience thanks to the great chemistry between the actors Sofia Helin and Kim Bodnia. So we re-wrote the first four episodes to make sure each episode had one of those private scenes, in an elevator, in a car or while they’re walking.
Scandi TV series often have the double plot structure, which balances the intimate with more general social issues. Is this structure again present in The Bridge 2?
HR: In Sweden, we have a very long tradition of crime writing that started in the 60s-70s with Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, which is when you do a cop show you also try to say something about society. Henning Mankell, Håkan Nesser and all other great crime writers do this. Then public broadcasters really ask for this. They don’t want a pure car chase and suspense cop show. They want it to have another layer that makes it important to do it here and now. Personally, I think that the crime genre is the best genre to comment on society. It deals with crime and crimes are the product of the society we’re living in.
How do you choose the social issues to tackle each time and how do you introduce them in the crime plot?
HR: When we sit down with the storyline, we almost always start with ‘who dunnit and why’ because then we can build the plot around it. The second question is that in the ‘why’, there has to be bigger issues. In Season 2, the issue is climate change and environmental terrorists.
Looking more closely at Season 2, how does the story evolve; how much time has elapsed since Season One?
HR: The series starts again with a crime. Saga investigates it and brings Martin in. They haven’t seen each other in about 13 months. Then one crime leads to another that you don’t see coming. But the plot is built in the same way.
What new characters have you introduced?
HR: Saga has a boyfriend and we also changed the team around her in the police station. We also felt after Season One that their colleagues were not developed enough.
Were you involved in the French/UK remake The Tunnel the US/Mexican remake The Bridge?
HR: No I wasn’t involved at all. The producer Lars Blomgren from Filmlance is very involved, especially in the Mexico/US version as he is executive producer.
Crime seems to be your speciality, with the Sandhamn Murders and Sebastian Bergman’s series (based on your own novels!). Have you always had this passion for the genre and is it hard to find new twists?
HR: Yes I’ve written three novels in the Sebastian Bergman series with Michael Hjorth (Tre Vänner). I feel really comfortable with the crime genre. Now I would also like to try other genres such as supernatural or fantasy. I’d like to do something quite violent.
Do you like the way streaming sites such as Netflix offer new ways to watch TV series, in one go if you like?
HR: I love Netflix and the streaming sites. For many years I hardly watched TV dramas on television. I usually waited for the shows to come out on DVD and sat watching them a whole week. Now you don’t have to wait for the DVD. In the short term, this is how TV drama will be watched.