Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Borgen: Power & Glory’ on Netflix, A Danish Drama Full Of Political Intrigue And The Challenge Of Upholding Personal Principles

Borgen: Power & Glory (Netflix) is the standalone fourth season of Borgen, the tense Danish political drama from creator Adam Price that first premiered in 2010 and came to Netflix in 2020. Once the unlikely first female prime minister of Denmark, Birgitte Nyborg (Sidse Babett Knudsen) is now the country’s Foreign Minister in the new government of a social media-savvy female PM who’s a decade her junior. And trouble is already spouting for Birgitte, because oil’s been discovered in Greenland.    

BORGEN: POWER & GLORY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Whalers of the Disko Bay region in western Greenland gather around the enormous carcass of a bowhead whale. Together, they flense its skin, cutting thick squares to rest on the ice in the sun. The scene is accompanied by an epigraph from Henry James. “Man is the only animal whose desires increase as they are fed.”

The Gist: The resource-based industry that once dominated the Arctic island-based nation of Greenland is literally superseded in the opening moments of Borgen: Power & Glory, as an old whaler watches a sleek red helicopter fly over that bowhead whale’s body en route to the field headquarters of the Canadian energy company that just discovered black gold. The find presents a challenge for newly-minted Foreign Minister Birgitte Nyborg (Knudsen). She’s committed to ending oil dependency in Denmark by 2050, achieving carbon neutrality, and remaining a member of the Paris Agreement. But Greenland, with its evolving state of home rule from Denmark, is excited to extract the oil. Hans Eliassen (Svend Hardenberg), Birgitte’s Greenlandian counterpart, says natural resources are his jurisdiction, but she isn’t so sure about that.

As Birgitte’s old political rival Michael Laugeson (Peter Mygind) grouses on TV1 about her New Democratic party and “the last hurrah from a political has-been,” former anchor Katrine Fonsmark (Birgitte Hjorst Sorensen) is getting acclimated as the station’s new chief. As she’s welcomed to the newsroom by veteran editor Torben Friis (Soren Malling) and anchor Narciza Aydin (Ozlem Saglanmark), Katrine acknowledges the difficult role and diminished status of television news in the age of social media and rampant Fake News.

The Greenland oil find is potentially massive. Geological surveys put it at 100 million barrels annually, good for 285 billion dollars. The drilling site is also precariously close to a UNESCO-protected natural area, and the issue of distributed income between Denmark and its former island holding is even more precarious. When Birgitte calls the discovery a “pipe dream” on national television, new prime minister Signe Kragh (Johanne Louise Schmidt) is incensed, and demands a public retraction. These two were already circling. (Birgitte bristles at Kragh’s “the future is female” hashtagging.) And when Kragh promotes Laugeson as her Chief of Staff, Birgitte sees an opportunity for a little backhand political intrigue.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Borgen is produced by DR, the Danish public broadcasting outlet behind Nordic noir hit The Killing. And it’s worth revisiting the British psychedelic horror series Fortitude, where creepy doings went down in a Norwegian settlement amidst the wilds of the far north Arctic.

Our Take: From Sidse Babett Knudsen and Birgitte Hjort Sorensen to the return of Lars Mikkelsen, brother of Mads, as cagey economist and Katrine’s love interest Soren Ravn, the return of so much of the Borgen cast will be a welcome sight for longtime viewers. The third season aired way back in 2013, so there’s bound to be an evolution. But nearly a decade later, issues with the social and political climate – not to mention the climate climate – have evolved, too, and Borgen: Power & Glory is ready to leap into the fray, from Fake News namechecks to the foreboding creep of Russia and its unnamed President. He has already invaded Ukraine, Birgitte tells a colleague. Can Denmark’s international status withstand the optics of Russia drilling for oil in Greenland? The political drama here is dicey and laced with contemporary issues, and in the first episode, a more aggressive Foreign Minister Nyborg proves up to the challenge.

But how the price of oil affects the air on her homefront isn’t Birgitte’s only challenge. Magnus (Lucas Lynggaard), her son with ex-husband Phillip (Mikael Birkkjaer), is the 20-year-old vegan activist son of Denmark’s Foreign Minister who cuts school to steal tractor trailers full of pigs and set free their prisoners. It’s a subplot that’s certain to keep Birgitte’s domestic homefront just as excitable. And what’s going on with Birgitte’s episodes with sudden hot flashes? Bergen: Power & Glory has returned its main character to a landscape laced with all kinds of landmines, both political and personal, and hasn’t lost a step.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Asger (Mikkel Boe Folsgaard), Birgitte’s newly-installed Greenland negotiator, tells her about a shadowy Russian stakeholder in the Canadian energy company that’s fronting the Greenland drilling, an outfit run by a confidant of the Russian president. This is inner circle stuff, he says. “So we landed a case leaving us up to our necks in shit, with only sleeping with the devil to look forward to.”

Sleeper Star: Svend Hardenberg is having a lot of fun here as Hans Eliassen, Greenland’s Foreign Minister. He phones Birgitte from the helm of his personal watercraft, and pretty much tells her that Greenland’s going for the oil extraction no matter what. And he takes a casual air toward her pledge for negotiations, which probably means he’ll be the toughest one to deal with.

Most Pilot-y Line: As prime minister Kragh congratulates Greenland on the oil find, Birgitte fumes to her staff. “The Danish Realm is the business of the PM’s office. The Arctic is the business of the Foreign Minister. And I have higher climate conditions than Signe. The matter is mine.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. With much of its principal cast back in the saddle, Borgen: Power & Glory is a welcome return for a terrific Danish political thriller that hasn’t let up the tension since its 2010 premiere.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges