Is The Killing the best drama of the summer? Donal O’Donoghue investigates.
You saw a close-up of the trolley wheel. You saw the finger nails, painted and broken. You saw the limp, matted hair. And then, as the camera rose, a white sheet fell on the corpse of Rosie Larsen. The morgue scene from The Killing emphasised the human drama - and the oddness - at the heart of this thirteen part series that is likely to make it one of the most compelling of the summer.
It arrived last night (Thursday) to Channel 4 burdened with praise and great expectations. The hype was two-fold: not just for the original Danish production, acclaimed as one of the greatest TV shows of modern times, but also the Fox TV spin-off which debuted to universal praise Stateside in April. With all this fuss, you approached with caution.
Sticking rigorously to the original (which I have not seen), the US version is located at the gritty edge of Seattle but some names (Larsen, Linden) remain the same. The tale – which plays out over thirteen days – is, in some respects, simple. A young girl goes missing and when her battered body is found in the boot of a campaign car for the local mayoral candidate, it opens a can of worms.
Heading the investigation is Detective Sarah Linden – less than two weeks from her wedding day and itching to fly south to her fiancé. She is assisted by a rookie called Holder. Linden is not conventionally pretty: her strawberry blonde hair frames a face that seems forever on the edge of some elusive question and she dresses like she watched too many episodes of Columbo. Her partner seems even less inspiring: a ferret-faced cop, eager to please and likely to put his two feet in his mouth at any moment. And their task seems immense with more suspects than a bumper edition of Cluedo and some political minders hoping to bury the case as soon as possible.
The Killing is a show laden with as many cultural tropes you care to dig out including the missing girl (Twin Peaks), the misfit female detective (Fargo), the bleached, limbo-like locale (Insomnia), the bloody basement (Se7en), the strict time-frame (each episode covers a twenty-four period akin to 24) and, floating in the ether, the ghost of Chappaquidick. But the drama is never swamped by its cleverness. There are powerful moments of humanity in The Killing, which gives its characters time and space to reveal their strengths and failings. The moment when the body of Rosie is found is superbly orchestrated: cutting between a telephone conversation and the trunk being opened. The mother, unable to see, can only guess why her husband is howling in anguish on the other end of the line.
Like all savvy thrillers The Killing is a show that doesn’t show. There is little blood and guts and the action is artfully directed. Moments of tenderness and heartbreak – the Larsen parents try to explain Rosie’s death to their two young boys on a deserted beach – add tragic impetus to the swirl of the investigation and the political chicanery.
But The Killing intercuts these sequences with ones of dread and unease. When Holder waits around the school after class, smoking a joint and eyeing two teenagers, you are unsure what’s going on. Why is he chatting up these girls?
As the final credits silently rolled there was a teaser for next week: a grotesque carnival mask, a beating being meted out, a political campaign in crisis. Those scenes are knocked out in a rat-a-tat of urgency. But you shouldn’t need any such carrots to watch this show. It will knock you dead.
Donal O'Donoghue
