Both Sarahs begin the season about to leave their job, to move with their fiancé and son to somewhere else – in Forbrydelsen, it’s to Sweden, in The Killing, it’s to Sonoma. Really, the first episode of the US version, overall, is about 80 percent the same as the Danish version.ģ. In fact, the opening scenes of both shows, the girl running through the woods being chased by the unseen figure with the flashlight, are nearly identical. Rosie and Nanna are both raped, chased through the woods, and drowned in the truck of a car connected to a local political campaign. They run a moving business, have two other kids, the wife has a screw-up sister who knows more than she’s saying. And the Birk Larsen family is a lot like the Larsen family in the US version. Nanna and Rosie’s stories are pretty close-the costume party at school, the sex room in the school basement, the secrets. In Forbrydelsen, the victim is Nanna Birk Larsen, who becomes Rosie Larsen in the US version. Side note: Forbrydelson 2, as it next season was called, picks up two years later and follows a completely different case, which is solved in ten episodes.Ģ. So… The Danish show got their fans just as angry with a cliffhanger ending instead of a solution. Apparently the network got so much angry email from viewers that they immediately went back into production, and launched what is now considered the “second half” of season one that September. It ran for ten weeks, then ended with an enormous game-changing cliff-hanger… and Danish fans were outraged that they’d have to wait ten months for the next season to solve this mystery. It began in January of 2007 in Denmark, and quickly became the most popular TV show on the air. This is what most of the outraged US fans might be most interested to learn. What is now known as Forbrydelsen season one, was originally going to be broadcast as two seasons. So I was probably always the wrong audience for The Killing.īut here are some side-by-side comparisons, and some general thoughts:ġ. Also, I live in Seattle, where The Killing takes place, but wasn’t filmed.
Titles like Lowlife and Criminal chronicle the lawbreakers while his work on books like Gotham Central chronicled the cops.įair warning-this match-up will likely be unfair, because Forbrydelsen (the Danish show that AMC’s The Killing is based on) is my favorite cop show since The Wire. Eisner Award winner Ed Brubaker writes the monthly adventures of Captain America, but he also has written some of the best crime comics of recent years.