Complete third season of Danish political drama TV series Borgen on DVD
(3 discs).
Borgen's central figure is the 40-year old political leader Birgitte Nyborg
(Sidse Babett Knudsen) who through her idealism and huge effort secures her
party a landslide victory and thus faces the biggest challenge of her life: how
most effectively to use the newly won seats, and how far she is willing to go in
order to gain as much influence as possible. She is a woman with a burning
commitment, a big heart and little time. Will she be able to be a successful and
professional top politician and stay true to herself at the same time?
It's been two years since Birgitte Nyborg resigned as a Prime Minister of
Denmark. Her old party is pointing to opposite direction of what she believes it
should rather head to. She is now ready to comeback and challenge the current
situation at the Parliament.
Borgen Season 3 is about Birgitte re-thinking her future and concluding that
what she truly desires is going back into politics. She finds the best way to do
so is by founding a new political party. Journalist Katrin Fonsmark, , becomes
her new ally, media adviser and spokesperson. This third season depicts Birgitte
empowerment and the origin of her new political party: her way back to
‘Borgen’.
Subtitled
Awards for series
- Won BAFTA Award, Best International (2012)
- Won Prix Italia Award, TV Drama – Series and Serials (2010)
- Won Biarritz International Festival Golden FIPA Award, TV Series and
Serials (2011)
- Won Monte-Carlo TV Festival Golden Nymph Award, Outstanding Actress –
Drama Series, Sidse Babett Knudsen (2011)
Borgen TV Show Review
(For Seasons 1 & 2)
"For those of you not au fait with the affairs of our Danish cousins, the
current Prime Minister of Denmark is a woman named Helle Thorning-Schmidt. When
Borgen began in 2010, Thorning-Schmidt was already the leader of her party, but
the country had yet to vote her into power… and so Borgen creator Adam Price
decided to make that jump for her. He created Birgitte Nyborg, made her Prime
Minister on TV screens across the land, and thus paved the way for
real life.
Of course, just as with Martin Sheen‘s President Jed Bartlet in The
West Wing (Borgen‘s glossy American cousin), the leader in question is
idealised, charismatic and liberal; someone we not only identify with, but
someone we would all love to know. Whether Thorning-Schmidt lives up to her
television counterpart is a matter of opinion – we could not possibly
comment – but one thing is for sure: while the real Prime Minister is the one
who actually affects Danish lives, Nyborg is the one the people welcomed into
their living rooms each week while the show was airing.
Which brings us to Borgen in Britain. An astonishing success on BBC4, the
show followed in the footsteps of its sister-phenomenon The Killing to become a
genuine Scandi-TV cult. And quite rightly so, too. Across the two seasons
released..Borgen proves itself to be an addictive drama of magnificent
proportions, taking in all the things you’d expect in a political story: sex
scandals, backstabbing ministers, corruption and blackmail. But its core, which
lies firmly in the hands of Sidse Babett Knudsen‘s compelling Prime
Minister, focuses on the honest desire to do good.
Nyborg wants to change the world; she wants Denmark to stop feeling sorry
for itself, to make big strides both at home (healthcare bills) and abroad
(trying to negotiate peace in Africa). Naturally, no Prime Minister can walk
into the job and make these things happen without having to fend off hyena-like
packs of opposition ministers; nor can anybody take up such a position of power
without it having an affect on their private life.
Consequently, Nyborg starts the series playful yet determined, gradually
honing her skills to become a solid, unstoppable force, all with the help of her
fascinating spin doctor Kasper Juul (Pilou Asbaek). The show’s most
gratifying feature, perhaps, is the fact that Nyborg’s sex isn’t dealt with
until the conclusion of season two, when she has to choose between her job and
her family. The fact that she is a female Prime Minister isn’t the most
important thing about her; what matters are her policies, who she is, and what
this job will cost her as a human being, not merely as a woman. Progressive?
Perhaps – this probably would not have happened on a British series (and the
UK press release for this Blu-ray makes a point of calling her “sexy”, which
is depressing). But it makes Birgitte Nyborg one of the great TV characters of
our age… and Borgen simply unmissable.
Ultimately, Borgen is a cracking Danish treat that manages to combine
hard politics with gripping human drama. Watch it for its wonderful Prime
Minister, then fall in love with everything else along the way." Cult TV
Times UK