Launched on DR1’s evening prime time slot on Wednesday January 1st, the 10 part drama series The Legacy (oriniginal title: Arvingerne) directed by Pernilla August and produced by DR received glowing reviews in the major daily newspaper (4 stars in BT, Ekstra Bladet, Jyllands-Posten to 5 stars in Politiken) and 1,784,000 Danes watched the first episode. Even more people (nearly 2 million) watched the second episode on Sunday January 5.
The series scripted by Maya Ilsøe stars Trine Dyrholm, Mikkel Boe Følsgaard (Silver Bear in Berlin for A Royal Affair), Maria Bach Hansen and Carsten Bjørnlund as four siblings living very different lives, far away from each other, and forced to take stock of their mother’s legacy when she dies. The series was pre-sold to several territories such as the UK, Benelux, France and Germany.
Set in the roaring twenties in a seaside hotel in north Jutland, the Downton Abbey-style Badehotellet was launched on December 30 on TV2 and was followed by 1,524,000 Danes, a 57% share, making it the highest audience for a TV2 fiction series since the late 1990s. Viewers also gave the series a good satisfaction rating of 4.1 on a scale of 1 to 5.
Written by the Emmy-award winning duo Stig Thorsboe and Hanna Lundblad, the series produced by SF Production for TV2 was directed by Fabian Wullenwebber (The Protectors, The Killing).
The Norwegian pubcaster NRK also launched on January 1st its high profile conspiracy crime series Mammon. Episode one (of six) gathered 997,000 viewers and episode two over 900,000.
The thriller inspired by All the President’s Men was sold to 20th Century Fox Television and Chernin Entertainment for a remake in the US.