Global Audiences of Danish TV Drama

11/30/20 • 41 min

The global success of Danish TV drama in the late 2000s and early 2010s was surprising because of the relatively small number of people who can understand the Danish language and because the programmes were produced largely for a domestic audience by public broadcasting corporations. Audiences around the world appear to have responded to the combination of authenticity, emotional proximity and the portrayal of gender as well as the exotic Nordicness of the series. Many people from the Anglophone community as well as elsewhere were prepared to watch drama with subtitles in English for the first time. In 2020, the wave of hype around these programmes appears to be over, but key aspects, along with what is often considered to be Nordic Noir, arguably still influence mainstream television-making.

Researchers Pia Majbritt Jensen and Ushma Chauhan Jacobsen from Aarhus University are ideally placed to help us find out why Danish TV drama is popular the world over as they have been involved in an interdisciplinary project which started in 2013 involving seven other scholars from Aarhus University and affiliated scholars in eight different countries focusing on The Killing, Borgen and The Bridge.

Listen to Pia and Ushma discuss with editor of nordics.info, Nicola Witcombe, how different players at many different levels from key broadcasters in the television industry down to bloggers created an organic hype around the series, arguably leading to key elements from the series becoming mainstream today.
Find a list of the programmes mentioned in the podcast.
Be sure to listen to the other nordics.info podcasts on Nordic identity, or the Nordic Model.
#nordicsinfo #ReNEWHub

Previous Episode

Gaming the Nordics

Around a third of the world’s population play video games. But how are video games used to explore images of the Nordic region? What place do video games occupy in terms of cultural representations? To what extent can video games be considered part of a cultural hegemony from a historical culture perspective?

Nordic regionality is expressed through different applications of game, game design and play. It is used in different ways (such as, counterfactual uses of history or using myth and nostalgia) and in different contexts (such as, using history and heritage). From a practical perspective, regional game production and game consumption by local teams and actors intersect with the mainstream and global game industry in different ways.

This podcast was recorded in September 2020 when the editor of nordics.info Nicola Witcombe caught up with three researchers from the Helsinki Game Research Collective from the University of Helsinki. The three participants - Heidi Rautalahti, Lysiane Lasausse, Ylva Grufstedt - are ideally placed to assist us in finding out more about the subject from different perspectives coming as they do from history, theology and Nordic Noir.
Find a list of the games and books mentioned on nordics.info.
Be sure to listen to the other nordics.info podcasts on Nordic identity, or the Nordic Model.
#nordicsinfo #ReNEWHub

Next Episode

The Nordic Model at Risk?: Conversations on Regulation

An ageing population, immigration, tax evasion and incoming foreign workers are frequently cited as threats to the Nordic Model. The universal welfare state is built upon citizens and the state fulfilling their particular roles: the state providing childcare, healthcare and benefits in return for people working and paying their taxes (’the social contract’). But don’t these roles require a lot of national regulation? And what happens to them when globalising forces (such as the arrival of workers from overseas, Europeanisation or international financial markets) hit?

In this podcast, we get to hear about some specific challenges which exemplify the overall context of how big and small crises have affected regulation in the Nordics. The podcast was recorded in October 2020 at the annual conference of the Danish European Community Studies Association. Thanks are extended to the organisers for letting nordics.info be a fly on the wall.
Find futher reading and full biographies of the participants by clicking here.
If you would like to hear more about the Nordic Model, check out two earlier podcasts from @KnowledgeOnTheNordics: The Nordic Model: Heaven or Hell, or read more on nordics.info.

Knowledge on the Nordics - Global Audiences of Danish TV Drama

Transcript

Ushma Chauhan Jacobsen 0:09
Why on earth should drama series produced in Denmark primarily for a Danish audience, and all of a sudden this unexpected popularity that they start popping up and appearing in other parts of the world that was very unusual. It was very, very unusual.
Nicola Witcombe 0:29
That was the voice of Ushma Chauhan Jacobsen, associate professor at Aarhus University. Ushma is ideally placed to answer the question: Why does Danish TV drama travel? Only about five a