DVD review - The Bridge: Season Two

The Bridge: Season Two *** (out of 5) (Unrated) This Swedish-Danish TV miniseries opened with a corpse left on a bridge, straddling the border between two the two countries. That jurisdictional overlap teamed cops from both sides, Danish Inspector Martin Rohde and Swedish detective Saga Noren to solve the crime, which turned out to be a double, since the body was actually the top half of one woman and the bottom of another. They succeeded well enough to not only put away the perps, but inspire a US TV remake, with that stiff dumped on the line between Texas and Mexico.

Season Two begins 13 months later, as the traumatized Rohde is trying to find his groove again. This time a crewless ship crashes into the same bridge with several corpses in the hold. He and Noren begin their second 10-episode gig, rushing to discover who they were, who done them in, and how their deaths may fit into a far bigger threat to both countries. The characters struggle with plenty of personal baggage as the scope of the crime and its potential ripple effects escalates.

One is highly emotional; the other so impassively logical that Star Trek co-star Mr. Spock would seem relatively moody. {Anyone who just assumed the former to be the female half of the team would be dead wrong. Grade yourselves on the sexism scale.} Rohde’s personal and marital issues ebb and flow, while Noren’s awkward attempts to cohabitate with a new lover whose feelings she can’t being to fathom, could easily support diagnoses along the lines of Aspergers or autism. Even so, nothing about her emotional impairment limits her superior intellectual function in analyzing and organizing vast amounts of evidence. It may even help her focus better than her peers.

Compared to Season One, all these plot threads delve deeper into the principals’ personal ordeals, while ramping up the import of the main criminal enterprise to the realm of terrorism. Overall, it seemed less cohesive and more turgid than the first, but still compelling for those who’ve developed empathy with the characters. This season makes you work a bit harder to keep the players and subplots in order, but delivers the goods. There’s enough recapping of previous events so those starting here won’t be completely lost. But viewers who start from square one will be more fully engaged with this round. And better prepared for Season Three.

Side note: The series isn’t MPAA rated, but should be approached as adult fare. The violence occurs mostly off-camera, with less gore than some of our network prime-time crime dramas. As has been true for most European series I’ve reviewed, moments of nudity that wouldn’t appear in our domestic TV fare will be in the mix, but more casually within a realistic situation than erotically. (6/5/15)