Following the BBC’s success with Danish dramas The Killing and Borgen, ITV has decided to jump on the bandwagon with its own import from Denmark – Those Who Kill (Den Som Dræber in Danish), a six-part crime series due to start on ITV3 on Thursday 23 February 2012. Each 90-minute episode is a standalone story based on the exploits of a special unit within Copenhagen’s police force.
The two stars – Detective Inspector Katrina Ries Jenson (played by Laura Bach) and forensic psychiatrist Thomas Schaeffer (played by Jakob Cedergren) – are called upon when serial killers do not fit the normal patterns. This is set against the background of a changing social climate in Denmark were welfare is decreasing and immigration increasing.
The first episode starts when the skeletons of four young women are discovered and Jenson and Schaeffer are tasked with profiling their killer.
Actors in Those Who Kill
Laura Sofia Bach starred as Nina in the 2009 film No Right Turn. Her first recurring TV role was as Suzanne von Halle in The Eagle from 2005 to 2006. She also played Gertrud Wallin in the 2008 series Album.
Jakob Cedergren won a best actor Bodil award for playing Robert Hansen in 2008’s Terribly Happy and has twice had Bodil nominations – for playing Tom in 2003’s Stealing Rembrandt and Nick in 2010’s Submarino. Terribly Happy also earned him a best actor award at the 2009 Robert Festival. Like Bach, he was in The Eagle, as Palle Pis, but his first recurring TV role was as Bjarne Madsen in 2000’s Edderkoppen. He followed that by playing Toke Oskaras in Nikolaj og Julie. BBC viewers may recognise him as Phillip Dessau from two episodes of The Killing. More recently, he was Charles in Harry & Charles.
Lars Mikkelsen plays Magnus Bisgaard. He will also be familiar to The Killing fans for his portrayal of Troels Hartmann. His first major role was as Jens Fisker in the 1997 and 1998 TV series Strisser på Samsø. He played Ole Madsen in the mini-series Edderkoppen and Per Køller in Nikolaj og Julie. He won the best actor award at the Robert Festival in 2010 for playing Martin Vinge in the 2009 film Headhunter, a role which also saw him nominated for a Bodil award and a Zulu award.
The series also features Lærke Winther Andersen as Mia Vogelsang, Frederik Meldal Nørgaard as Stig Molbeck and Iben Dorner as Benedicte Schaeffer.
Team Behind Those Who Kill
The series is based on the novels of Elisabeth Egholm. The writing team included Stefan Jaworski, Siv Rajendram, Rikke De Fine Licht and Thorleif Hoppe. Among the directors were Birger Larsen, Niels Nørløv and Kasper Barfoed. It was produced by Entertainment One (eOne).
The show had relatively poor audience figures in Denmark but has done better on the international market with, for example, nearly four million viewers in Germany. The USA’s A&E Network has taken the usual but no less odd decision to remake the show rather than broadcast the original.
Steve Rogerson - Steve Rogerson is a UK-based writer specialising in television, technology, sports and beer.
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