Bron’s Lars Blomgren

The Scandinavian crime drama Bron was such a hit throughout Scandinavia and Europe that Filmlance, the production company that produced it, and its parent company, the Shine Group, have co-produced two other versions of the show: The Tunnel, for Sky Atlantic and CANAL+, and The Bridge for FX in the U.S. Both remained faithful to the premise of the original show: a dead body is found on the border connecting two countries. In the Anglo-French version, the body was found in the Channel Tunnel, and in the American version, the body was on the border between Texas and Mexico. At the core of all three series is the relationship between a female detective from one country and a male one from the other. Lars Blomgren, executive producer of Bron, talks to TV Formats Weekly about the nuanced differences between the three series.

WS: How did Bron come about?
BLOMGREN: The commercial station TV4 and the public broadcaster SVT in Sweden had been airing Danish TV series in prime time for some time, but the Danes didn’t air any Swedish shows at all or maybe one every five years. It was so difficult for us to get into prime time in Denmark. So I sat down together with the management of SVT in Stockholm and we said, how can we possibly get into prime time in Denmark? We started working on one idea that didn’t turn out that well but then we said, OK, What if we put a series near the border between Sweden and Denmark? We were not really talking about a bridge at that point, we were just saying, Let’s try to come up with a series that organically takes place on both sides of the border with Swedish involvement and a Danish involvement, make it look as Danish as possible and then maybe we can get it into prime time! And so we did. We came up with the idea of a dead body on the Øresund Bridge. I think we succeeded—it is one of the top-rated shows in Denmark. For me it’s strange because most of the times a series starts as a creative idea, but this actually started on the business side.

WS: When the series was created, the female detective, Saga Norén, was never meant to have Asperger Syndrome, was she?
BLOMGREN: She acted like she had it and it was really funny, we received a letter from the Swedish Asperger Association thanking us for this very good portrayal of a person with Asperger Syndrome! But we never said she had it, we just gave her this [peculiar behavior]. Sweden and Denmark are two really different cultures. If you look at the characters from that perspective, Martin [who is more outgoing] is very much the way we Swedes consider the Danes to be. Saga [strong willed and a loner] is a lot like what the Danes consider the Swedes to be! The Danes have been salesmen for centuries. They have been in trade but they’ve never had one single industry. We Swedes are the opposite; we look at something and figure out how it works. They look at something and they want to try to sell it.

WS: Was the first series immediately a hit in both countries or did it take a while to catch on?
BLOMGREN: It was an immediate hit. It was interesting in a way because the strong female character actually scared some people away. The ratings of the second episode dropped. Then it picked up, after the third episode people started using the catch-up services to get into the show. The ratings kept going up and it became a big success.

WS: Were all the episodes written before you went into production or were you writing as you were producing the episodes?
BLOMGREN: We are just like the English. First we write and then we produce. But in this show we were a bit late in the production process. We realized quite soon that the dynamics between Martin and Saga were just fantastic, so while we were in production we created a lot of new scenes. We decided that in every episode we wanted to have one scene with them, for example in the car, because [their exchanges] worked so well. We made more changes than usual on a Scandinavian show during production.

WS: What has been driving the success of Scandinavian drama? It has worked in its home territories for many years, but what is it that makes it connect with viewers in so many countries?
BLOMGREN: Quality for one. I keep coming back to the fact that we are like a rather peaceful part of the world and if you look at the best crime shows they are in a way like family dramas on steroids. We could never afford to do big shootouts or thrillers. We have to do more character-driven series. And what happens in a good crime story, at least in the Scandinavian ones, is that you get close to people in stressful situations. We have [the tradition of] Igmar Bergman. If you haven’t had a war in 200 years then you develop Bourgeois problems instead, such as not being loved by your family. We have a way of mixing drama and crime and that is a good way of doing it.

WS: In the original Scandinavian series, Bron, the female detective, Saga, has a strong, somewhat off-putting personality, and it took a while for the audience to warm up to her. Did the same thing happen in The Tunnel and in The Bridge?
BLOMGREN: We had the same reaction in all three versions. I remember when we talked about actress Diane Kruger’s portrayal of Detective Sonya Cross in the The Bridge, they were a bit afraid that she would have the same effect, but apparently it worked out. The ratings were good in the U.S.

WS: What kind of local elements did you have to add to the English-French version, The Tunnel? How did the show have to change?
BLOMGREN: The English one is closer to the Scandinavian version than the American one. The writers and producers of The Tunnel changed the show in a very clever way. The first discussion was whether Saga should be English or French. That was a long and very interesting discussion. It ended up with her being French and actress Clémence Poésy cast as Detective Elise Wassermann. [The writers made some very interesting adaptations]—in Sweden, [the characters] have a conflict with [homeless] people living in the streets; the French have conflicts with illegal immigrants. They kept the same structure to the show, but they added value. I was so amazed by [the changes they made]. If you look at The Tunnel and compare it to Bron, they actually added value in every single episode.

WS: The Tunnel is an English-French bilingual show, a first for both British and French television.
BLOMGREN: With Bron, we decided from the start never to make an issue out of the language problem. We just claimed that the Swedes speak Danish and the Danish speak Swedish and that they understand each other all the time. While The Tunnel did the opposite. The differences between the two languages add a lot of humor to the series. Even the first time [the detectives] meet they joke about their differences. They stayed quite loyal to the original show and then they added a lot of value and they did it in a very clever way. We never used the language as an element in the series and they added a much more comic level than we ever used and I really appreciated that.

WS: Did a lot of changes have to be made for the American audience?
BLOMGREN: They used the same structure, but it’s completely different to portray a rich country and a poor country. France and England and Sweden and Denmark are fairly equal. But if you look at Mexico and the U.S., they are the opposite of one another. And the level of violence in The Bridge is greater than in Bron or The Tunnel. There is no comparison. For us to lock kids into a bus, that’s terrifying. The producers of The Bridge had to go in different directions.

It’s interesting, we had a conference in New York with the creative teams from all three shows and sat down for two days to talk. If you compare the key scenes in all three shows they are almost the same, for example in the first season when Martin’s son is killed. The three shows go in slightly different directions, but in the end, they close the circle at the same point. The biggest difference is that the American writers finish the original story in episode ten but then continue for three more, which was a new thing for me. They had their reasons to do it and it worked well. I keep coming back to the fact that remakes can be a challenge: you have the original version but at some point you will lose control. I am part of Shine and in doing The Tunnel, I had the Kudos guys and [Kudos chief executive] Jane Featherstone, and they are brilliant TV makers. And for The Bridge there was Carolyn Bernstein [executive VP of scripted programming at Shine America] and her team, so we were all good friends from the start.

WS: Are there other local versions in the works?
BLOMGREN: I’ve had suggestions from maybe 20 different territories, from South America, Asia, Russia, Ukraine, Italy, Albania, all possible versions. We just said we would put a hold on them until the American and English versions play out. It’s difficult enough with the two English-language versions, but this fall we are in serious talks with a Korean [producer] to do a North and South Korean version. I find that absolutely mind-blowing, so that is something that I really want to be involved with. That would be different!