Global Audiences of Danish TV Drama

The global success of Danish TV drama in the late 2000s and early 2010s was surprising because of the relatively small number of people who can understand the Danish language and because the programmes were produced largely for a domestic audience by public broadcasting corporations. Audiences around the world appear to have responded to the combination of authenticity, emotional proximity and the portrayal of gender as well as the exotic Nordicness of the series. Many people from the Anglophone community as well as elsewhere were prepared to watch drama with subtitles in English for the first time. In 2020, the wave of hype around these programmes appears to be over, but key aspects, along with what is often considered to be Nordic Noir, arguably still influence mainstream television-making.

Researchers Pia Majbritt Jensen and Ushma Chauhan Jacobsen from Aarhus University are ideally placed to help us find out why Danish TV drama is popular the world over as they have been involved in an interdisciplinary project which started in 2013 involving seven other scholars from Aarhus University and affiliated scholars in eight different countries focusing on The Killing, Borgen and The Bridge. 

Listen to Pia and Ushma discuss with editor of nordics.info, Nicola Witcombe, how different players at many different levels from key broadcasters in the television industry down to bloggers created an organic hype around the series, arguably leading to key elements from the series becoming mainstream today.

Find a list of the programmes mentioned in the podcast.

Be sure to listen to the other nordics.info podcasts on Nordic identity, or the Nordic Model.
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