Four months ago it looked as if writer Veena Sud had pulled off a neat trick. She had taken Denmark’s acclaimed The Killing — a low-key TV serial that stretched a murder investigation over 20 episodes so that it became an autopsy on a dozen of its characters’ souls — and made it into American television. The US critics loved it. Audiences were, for a cable network, large, and as obsessive as they had been in Denmark and Britain, where the original Killing won cult status.
AMC, for contractual reasons without its hit show Mad Men this year, found its reputation as the new HBO cemented. Two weeks on from the US Killing’s finale, things look a little different. I shall come to why.
Sud is in her forties, a former print and broadcast journalist, who switched careers after studying film and television at New York University. She worked on Push, Nevada, a mystery series, in 2002 and then became a writer on the police procedural Cold Case. Eighty-six episodes on, change beckoned and she left looking to develop an idea for cable, “specifically something dark and brave”. Her agent told her of a “property” called The Killing. Sud fell in love with it after three episodes, she says in a high-spirited phone call from Los Angeles. She wrote a treatment for an American version and pitched it to the copyright owners. Together, they approached AMC.
The Walking Dead network green-lit the series after seeing her pilot, in which a 17-year-old schoolgirl is murdered and found in a car being used by a candidate in an election campaign. In Søren Sveistrup’s original the campaign is for mayor of Copenhagen. In Sud’s it is for mayor of Seattle, whose rainy autumns lose nothing in their translation via Vancouver, where the series was shot. The dead girl, Nanna Birk Larsen, is rechristened Rosie. The lead detective, bedraggled yet curiously attractive single mother Sarah Lund, gets her surname re-conjugated as Linden but retains the famous sweater: “Our homage,” says Sud.
Much of the mood of the piece is maintained. I was especially relieved, watching the double bill that kicks off Channel 4’s transmission, to see very few familiar faces. Indeed, only heavy Sky Atlantic viewers will know that the actress who plays Linden, Mireille Enos, essayed identical twins in the bigamy drama Big Love.
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“From the very beginning,” says Sud, “our goal was not only to find actors who looked like the character and could embody those characters but actors who were just masters of the craft, phenomenal actors. Unfortunately, I think that is sometimes not as much a consideration as it should be in American television.”
Nor are her leads Hollywood-grade beauties, and this too adds to the verisimilitude. “The funny thing is that in real life all the actors are incredibly cute. We did a lot of work to make Sara look like that. It is to their credit.”
So far, so Danish. There are changes, however. The most important — at least as regards our decision whether to commit so soon to another Killing-thon — is the identity of the killer. “It is not the same killer as in the Danish version,” Sud confirms. The Danish serial was the “skeleton” upon which she added “flesh and muscle”.
Linden’s sidekick, for instance, is very different from Lund’s socially inept, happily married Jan Meyer. Linden’s is Stephen Holder, a tattooed undercover cop from narcotics, based on a policeman Sud met at Los Angeles Police Department where she had spent several months after Cold Case looking for inspiration.
Even in America, where self-promotion carries little stigma, Sud has gained a reputation as shameless champion of her (adopted) baby. To me she repeatedly makes comparisons between her show and Prime Suspect, Homicide and The Wire and distances it from standard cop fare.
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“The Killing is a character study dressed up as a cop show. It truly poses the question ‘what is the price of a life’, by looking at the aftershocks on a family, a detective and a city post a murder of a 17-year-old girl. It is a deeply character-based drama.
“The majority of prime-time cop shows in America right now focus more on the puzzle aspect of the investigation, stringing together clues and red herrings that allow you to use your left brain. We allow some of that but in addition make a really gripping character study and an emotional drama.”
As the series progressed, critics and the blogosphere took a forensic surgeon’s knife to some of her claims. Some felt the twists and false leads undermined the story’s seriousness. Sud defends them on the grounds that most child murder investigations begin by questioning immediate relatives, boyfriends and teachers before broadening out.
“We do not centre on ten different people who realistically could have had nothing to do with the girl’s death.”
The criticism turned poisonous when the series ended on June 19. The reason? If I were Veena Sud, this would be the point where I refused to let on. I keep my promises, however. The last episode ended not on the revelation of Rosie Larsen’s killer but another cliffhanger. The Hollywood Reporter said it was time Sud’s “handlers” silenced her and she was forced to consider “the monumental backlash” caused by the non-denouement.
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“What makes the situation worse is Sud’s seeming disconnect to her show’s flaws while simultaneously believing she is overseeing a work of genius.”
I tell her she appears to be one of the most hated women in America. She giggles. “I cannot say enough how grateful I am to our fans. They are so passionate about this show.
“To have this show receive the amount of conversation and debate and passion is truly overwhelming and I want to reassure the audience and let them know that they will know who killed Rosie Larsen in season two.”
She denies the network leant on her to create a must-see season two opener. “Not at all. It was a conversation we had at the very beginning when developing the show. The conversation we had is that this is AMC’s anti-cop show. AMC are committed to original storytelling. If that is what we are committed to, we have to be brave and say ‘Where does this story really end organically?’ versus finding yet another formula: hey, every season there is a murder and a resolution. That is another way of compartmentalising and not really telling the story that needs to be to told, whether it is in minutes or through a season.”
I ask her if she will accept it if the 600,000 British fans of the Danish Killing praise hers with the caveat that it is not as good as the original. “I don’t think any writer would be content with that. The original set an incredibly high bar and I hope we can reach it,” she replies, suddenly sounding very serious indeed.
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The Killing begins on Channel 4 tonight at 9pm
Body double: how Killings compare
Danish
The mean streets ... of Copenhagen, dominated by its redbrick City Hall that looks as if it has had a church built on its roof. Clean streets, no traffic jams, precious few people. The permafrost adds an icy charm.
The detective they call ... Lund. A single mother with a troubled relationship with her son about to up sticks for Sweden with her boyfriend. Workaholic. Chews gum. Has lost her hair brush.
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The trouble with her sidekick ... was that Jan Meyer got on with no one except his wife, to whom he was devoted. Could be relied upon to get the groceries on the way home.
Would you vote for ... a candidate called Troels Hartmann? You might well. His emotions lie deeply buried but he has charisma. Just ask his assistant. And he never wears the same shirt twice.
The must-have wardrobe item is ... Lund’s Faroe Islands sweater, the off-white one with dark grey snowflakes. Once you put it on you’ll never want to take it off. She didn’t.
American
The mean streets ... of Seattle, but not the groovy city of Sleepless in Seattle and Singles. Beneath the gleaming architecture, caught by aerial shot, lies desperation. And it’s always chucking it down — the rain machine had only one speed.
The detective they call ... Linden. Ditto the other Sarah, except she is taking her son to San Diego where she is going to marry her boyfriend. The rain keeps her hair in place.
The trouble with her sidekick ... is that Stephen Holder is covered with tattoos, worked undercover in the drugs squad and looks more like a killer than the killer (probably).
Would you vote for ... a candidate called Darren Richmond? Probably not. Actor Billy Campbell is the nearest thing to a conventional casting in the series and Darren’s a soppy bore.
The must-have wardrobe item is ... Linden’s Faroe Islands sweater is greedy for the same fame. Writer Veena Sud ordered a box of them for the production team.