Good news. A bit of Scandinavian noir for a Saturday night. In the Borgen slot, also known as the Guardian readers’ slot – BBC4, subtitles, not The X Factor etc. This one’s called Modus (BBC4, Saturday). It’s Swedish this time, but it’s based on a book by Anne Holt, the Norwegian crime writer, lawyer and former justice minister (there aren’t enough of them over there; they have to double up).
So, what have we got? Dark skies, obviously. And frozen landscapes. And cold trees, from above – a bit like the ones at the start of The Missing, although those trees are seen from below. Here’s a man living in a caravan in the woods – up to no good, I’m thinking. Never trust a man in a caravan in the woods. Make that: never trust a man in a caravan anywhere.
Told you; here he is again, in the lift of a nice Stockholm hotel, murdering a famous television chef and then hiding her body. There was a witness, though – Stina, the autistic daughter of Inger Johanne, a well-known psychologist and criminal profiler, who soon becomes involved in the case. And might become involved with Ingvar, the unhappy (of course), handsome (ditto) detective.
Killer caravanner strikes again, on Christmas Eve. This time, the victim is a female bishop who seems to be confused in her progressiveness – she’s all for gender-neutral weddings, but she is also anti-abortion, even in cases of rape.
Ah, the chef was a lesbian. And the killer has a video link to – and seems to be controlled by – some strange American preacher. I’m thinking this may have something to do with fundamental religious zeal.
I’m certainly intrigued. Modus is pacy and gripping, like a high-end Volvo with its snow tyres on … shut up! It has many of the characteristics we have come to expect and love of TV drama from these parts and in this slot: stripped, spare, dark skies; tick tick tick. Also, dark secrets lurking beneath the modernity and liberalism of the people – and the Nordic model.
What I’m not getting – not yet anyway – is the connection with characters I had with The Killing and The Bridge. Nor the constant reminders that murder isn’t just for entertainment, it’s also about tragic personal loss. This is less human, shallower, more obvious, over-spelled-out. I’m thinking about Stina rocking back and forward in the bath. And the way the killer’s appearances are accompanied by a sudden increase in menace on the soundtrack, in case you forget to be afraid. It’s a bit more ITV drama, or Nordic noir-lite.
Here’s a good idea: how about a football match with white players against black players? It might make you wince and squirm now, but it actually happened – a testimonial for West Brom’s Len Cantello at The Hawthorns, at pretty much peak football racism, 1979. And it is documented in Whites v Blacks: How Football Changed a Nation (BBC2, Sunday). No one at the time thought it was a bad idea. The opposite, in fact – opinions ranged from it’s just a bit of fun to it’s actually really positive. Maybe it was.
Adrian Chiles’s thoughtful, sobering documentary revisits that extraordinary game and some of the people involved, including the two remaining “Three Degrees”, Cyrille Regis and Brendon Batson. They, along with Laurie Cunningham (who was killed in a car crash in Spain aged 33), were christened the Three Degrees by then-Baggies boss Ron Atkinson, whose own media career was pretty much ended a quarter of a century later when a vile racist comment about Marcel Desailly was picked up by a microphone he didn’t realise was on.
Chiles uses the game (3-2 to the black players, incidentally) to tell a bigger story, the one about racism in football in the 70s. Regis, Batson and Cunningham might have been hero-worshipped by most Baggies fans, including a young Adrian, but the abuse they and the few other black players around suffered sullied what should have been the best days of their lives.
And if you’re thinking: how can that have possibly happened, just a generation ago, when today football – in this country at least – is so brilliantly diverse and intolerant of any kind of racism, then think again. It still happens, only less visibly. The abuse that used to pour down from the stands, in the form of N-words and bananas, kindly provided by the National Front now arrives via social media. Up to 140 characters of hatred. Depressing.
