Boxing Clever: Borgen
Every week, Michael Telfer – aka Mike TV – recommends a box set to crack open. This week’s he’s going all political, but with a scandi twist
With local elections on the horizon and global politics rarely out of the headlines, many will be turning to box sets for a break from the noise - the speeches, the sparring and the ever-present sense of uncertainty.
Others, of course, will be glued to every twist and turn. For those in the second camp, I can heartily recommend the Danish political drama Borgen.
Borgen tells the story of how Birgitte Nyborg (Sidse Babett Knudsen) goes from being a minor, left of centre politician and leader of the Moderate party to becoming the first female prime minister of Denmark, following a closely fought general election which results in a hung parliament.
Birgitte quickly finds that holding together her government of many colours while also being a wife and mother to two children is a tall order. Doing so without sacrificing her values, beliefs and scruples is nigh on impossible.
Sidse Babett Knudsen is incredible as the charismatic, virtuous and well meaning Birgitte. Over the first two seasons while she is in power we see her professional and personal lives come under incredible pressure and scrutiny.
Her relationship with her mentor and closest ally Bent Sejro (Lars Knutzon) is a core part of the story, and a useful yardstick for how far Nyborg drifts from her party’s key values over the course of her premiership.
Nyborg’s spin doctor Kasper Juul (Pilou Asbaek) is another key character who also wrestles with ethical decisions of his own, although it has to be said these are usually at the murkier end of the moral compass from Nyborg.
His on-off relationship with young news anchor Katrine Fonsmark (Birgitte Hjort Sorensen) places him in all kinds of quandaries, especially when dark memories from his past surface in season two.
The first three seasons ran from 2010 to 2013 and chart Nyborg’s rise to power, her time in office and then her return to politics following a brief hiatus as a public speaker and businesswoman.
A fourth season (titled Borgen – Power & Glory) was produced by Netflix in 2022 and followed the older and wiser Nyborg, now foreign minister. In a prescient plot twit, she was plunged into an international crisis where China, Russia and the US fought for control of new oil fields discovered in the Danish territory of Greenland. Where do they get their ideas.
Borgen is a fantastically well scripted and produced show which vividly portrays the human side of politics. Birgitte is a thoroughly three-dimensional character who takes her professional and private failures and her shortcomings increasingly hard during her time in power.
The political stereotypes that appear in Nyborg’s cabinet are as well crafted and realised as she is, and it is easy to find equivalents in the current Westminster line up. The show also had an uncanny knack for predicting events in Dutch and British politics, but I certainly won’t spoil any of those surprises here.