DR's hit series The Killing and Borgen have been nominated for the 2012 UK BAFTA Television Awards in the International category, alongside the US's Modern Family and Australia's The Slap. Last year Sarah Lund's first series of crime investigations won the coveted BAFTA Television Award in the same category and beat the US cult series Mad Men.
Both The Killing and Borgen have been major audience and critical successes for BBC Four and have opened up the UK market to foreign language TV drama. Among the hundred thousand UK fans of Scandinavian TV drama is the royal couple the Duchess of Cornwall and Prince Charles who admitted being ‘addicted' to The Killing and who came to visit the set of The Killing Season Three last March during an official visit in Copenhagen.
Another Scandinavian crime series, SVT and DR's The Bridge premiered on BBC Four's prime time slot last Saturday. Speaking to the UK newspaper The Guardian, Richard Klein, BBC Four's Controller said: "While The Bridge's Scandinavian heritage is likely to attract the growing audience for Swedish and more particularly Danish drama, BBC4 does not choose shows on that basis. We're not offering these things as Scandinavian drama, we're saying these are good Saturday-night dramas, it just happens that we're getting a lot of them out of Scandinavia. They've got to be good."
Season Three of the crime series The Killing created by Søren Sveistrup and produced by Piv Bernth will go on air on September 23 on DR1, while Season Three of the political series Borgen created by Adam Price and produced by Camilla Hammerich is in the middle of production. The Killing, Borgen and The Bridge were supported by Nordisk Film & TV Fond.