I had made another series in Denmark, Nikolaj and Julie, a romantic comedy, and was really fed up with the genre. I wanted to make something really, really dark. Nikolaj and Julie was a big success and won an International Emmy, so I got carte blanche to do whatever I wanted, and that’s why I made The Killing.
Originally it was an idea that a lot of people said couldn’t be done: to make a realistic picture of all the domino pieces falling from just one killing [in the series, a teenage girl is raped and drowned, and it follows the police investigation, the grieving parents and the politicians inadvertently embroiled in the case]. Another thought was to do something that was not episodic. At the time I was fed up with all the American series that show one crime, one killer, one episode, case closed. It’s so superficial and it’s nothing to do with realistic life. We started to research a lot of actual homicides in Denmark, some solved, some unsolved, followed a lot of detectives and read reports and saw pictures, and it became more and more real. It was a dark kind of research — there are pictures I’ll never forget. The series came to life that way.
The parents of the girl who is killed are torn between wanting the killer to be found and punished or just moving on with their lives. I thought the whole theme of forgiveness versus revenge was interesting — it was something you’d always consider if it was you. That part was there from the beginning.
I thought of the series as a kind of western. There are three arenas — the parents, the politicians, and then the cops — and they are all fighting for their territory, which they all cherish. Actually there’s also a lot of Shakespearean stuff in it — Lady Macbeth, and The Merchant of Venice was also something I thought about.
At the time Sofie Gråbøl, who plays Sarah Lund, the lead detective on the case, was known for romance and comedy but we made The Killing especially dark. Sofie is a fantastic person: very much alive, very extrovert sometimes, and very likeable. She has this special glance, she glows — you can lock her in a box and you still see her aura. But we wanted to turn it all around to make her introverted. We could do almost anything with her character — dress her down, give her male manners — but you always like her for some reason. That’s her special talent.
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I was fed up with the way the main characters in TV series always talked a lot. It was always “Blah blah blah ”. We wanted to make something more cinematic, and we looked at Clint Eastwood and the silent John Wayne type for the Sarah Lund character, because it was fantastic when she wasn’t always talking. Then we invented Sarah’s colleague Jan Meyer [Søren Malling], and he was talkative, and had characteristics that you would normally see as female. In Denmark a lot of women wrote that they wished they were Sarah Lund because you wouldn’t have to answer all the questions — you can just turn around and walk out of the door.
The series has a Danish identity, but it was never thought of as only being Danish. It was clear from the start that we wanted to do something universal. I wanted everyone to feel grief for the girl, for the parents.
The whole story is really a test: when there’s a pressure on you that’s inhuman, what remains in you? Are you still human or are you animal?
After three episodes in Denmark everyone was talking about who dunnit. That was never the point — I knew that of course when you make crime stories that is the motor of it all, but I was thinking: “OK, there’s a long way home.” Luckily they loved it, they loved the game of whodunnit.
The series is very dark but the point is that there are characters fighting evil, and you hope they get through the night — that’s why I think it’s not totally dark. There’s hope, there’s a torch in Sarah Lund’s hands. She’s the guide for us through the darkness.
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I am right in the middle of writing series three now, and we’re going to shoot in August. It will be the final chapter, the last one.
As told to David Hayles The Killing series one (15) is released on DVD on Mon; series two will be broadcast on BBC Four later this year