There are only a few reasons why television remakes are commissioned – mostly financial, occasionally artistic, sometimes in a misguided attempt to make something more relevant (such as the often-rumoured remake of Akira as a live-action movie set in America) – but the ways in which they can fail are as plentiful as there are fans to castigate a production company for daring to make such horrendous sows’ ears out of the silk purse originals.
There’s being too similar to the show/film being remade (Battlestar Galactica); being too different from the show/film being remade (Teen Wolf); not understanding the spirit of the show/film being remade (Teen Wolf again); turning a classic eighties film starring Michael J. Fox into an angsty, sub-Twilight piece of… okay, you get the idea: some things are sacrosanct and best left alone. That, certainly, is what highly-protective fans of Forbrydelsen (the critically-acclaimed Danish series of which The Killing is a remake) believe.
Turning Sarah Lund, she of the legendary jumpers, into Seattle Homicide detective Sarah Linden (Mireille Enos) is – in fans’ eyes – a crime of unimaginable proportions. But are they right? Should the US reworking be given a chance or should it be dismissed as opportunist hackery? And, most important of all, will Detective Linden be slipping into a comfy Faroese sweater at any point?
The Killing, American-style, starts with a terrorised girl running through a dark, dense forest, chased by an unseen pursuer behind a very bright torch; and while there are definite stylistic similarities with Forbrydelsen (right down to the use of the original’s incidental music), the overriding impression is of another series filmed in Vancouver and its environs: The X Files.
However, what follows over the next two hours of this double episode would be covered within the opening five minutes of most American police dramas; and while it’s something of a relief for things not to be moving with the light-speed plot unravelling of, say, CSI, the funereal pace (reminiscent, oddly enough, of Twin Peaks) and the endless rain starts to drag after a while – quite an achievement, considering Channel 4 decided to break things up with an ad break every ten minutes.
There are a few tired cop show clichés, too. Stephen Holder (Joel Kinnaman) – Linden’s intended replacement in Seattle P.D. who becomes her partner when the main detective postpones her departure for California – is as surly, slimy and self-assured as all new detectives apparently have to be since Brad Pitt’s Detective Mills grouched onto the screen in Se7en (‘A guy loses his wallet while he’s getting his knob polished?’ he sneers disbelievingly whilst in a field and later asks, of a seventeen year old girl, ‘Anybody hitting that?’) while there are a few too many zooms into Linden’s face to show demonstrate that our heroine is thinking hard about important issues.
However, when the body of Rosie Larsen (the teen from the opening sequence) is found in the water-filled boot of a car – a car that turns out to belong to a member of the campaign team working to make Darren Richmond (Billy Campbell) the new mayor of Seattle, the other principal strand of the show – things improve. The dismal, numb grief of the family isn’t flinched from; it’s drawn-out until the emotion is all but seared onto the lens with a laser. It’s not easy to watch, but it’s certainly brave, effective television. Although it’s not as good as Forbrydelsen – the unique and compulsive charm of the original is simply too rarefied to reproduce – The Killing is engaging enough, in a bleak sort of way, to bring you back for more.
Oh, and Linden does wear a woolly jumper. But it’s not baggy enough.
Airs at 9pm on Thursday 7th July 2011 on Channel 4.