---
title: "The Bridge"
year: 2011
kind: "series"
canonical: "https://film.one/tv/the-bridge"
fi1m_score: 84
critics_score: 82
critics_reviews: 5
published: "2026-09-17T14:15:46.587384+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-17T14:15:46.840640+00:00"
region: "US"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# The Bridge (2011)

Created by Hans Rosenfeldt · 1h 00m · MPA TV-MA · Crime, Mystery, Drama

**Fi1m score: 84** · Critics 82 (early) from 5 reviews

*In a sentence:* A detective with no small talk, a partner with too much, and a bridge that keeps producing bodies

> Hans Rosenfeldt’s cross-border crime series is as good as its reputation for two series and better than most for the other two. Sofia Helin’s Saga Norén is a detective we would recognise from across a street; the plots strain, she does not.

## Synopsis

At midnight the lights go out on the Øresund Bridge between Copenhagen and Malmö, and when they come back a body is lying across the painted line where Denmark becomes Sweden. Saga Norén (Sofia Helin) of the Malmö police takes the Swedish side; Martin Rohde (Kim Bodnia), a Copenhagen detective fresh from a vasectomy, takes the Danish. The body is two halves of two women. Saga wants the bridge sealed and the rules followed; Martin waves through an ambulance carrying the collapsed husband of Charlotte Söringer (Ellen Hillingsø), and the two are stuck with each other. Back in Malmö, Saga’s boss Hans Petterson (Dag Malmberg) referees while a killer begins sending the press a list of society’s failings.

## Review

Hans Rosenfeldt’s series begins with an idea so simple it is odd nobody had tried it: put a corpse on the exact border between two countries, so that two police forces have to share it. It runs for four series and 38 episodes, from 21 September 2011 to a final run in 2018, and it is as good as Scandinavian crime television has been. Two of the four series are close to faultless. The other two have a lead performance that covers for a great deal.

That performance is Sofia Helin as Saga Norén of the Malmö police. Saga says what is true in all circumstances, does not understand why anyone is upset by it, and drives to murders in a green Porsche wearing the leather trousers and long coat Kerstin Halvorsson gives her for all four series. The writers never put a diagnosis on her and never let anyone else do it either. In the first episode she changes her shirt in the middle of the open-plan office, and we laughed, then noticed nobody on screen was laughing and that Helin had not played it for one, and we stopped. The show does that repeatedly: sets Saga up as the joke and then hands the joke back to us.

Kim Bodnia’s Martin Rohde is the other kind of policeman: warm, lazy, unfaithful, and good with people in the ways Saga is not. He has a house in Copenhagen full of children from more than one marriage and a grown son, August (Emil Birk Hartmann), who is old enough to notice what his father is like. Bodnia plays Martin as a man who finds Saga funny and then, slowly, finds her admirable, and lets us watch the second thing replace the first. Their conversations in the car, with Saga asking whether something was a joke and Martin explaining that it was, are the scenes we remember, and there is not a corpse in any of them.

The look is grey-blue and cold. The bridge is lit at night like a runway, and the directors, Charlotte Sieling and Henrik Georgsson among them, keep returning to it from the same angles until it is a character. Production designers Rickard Wirén and Olle Remaeus give Saga a flat with a bed, a table and little else, and Martin a kitchen you cannot cross without stepping on a toy. Johan Söderqvist, Uno Helmersson and Patrik Andrén keep the score to long low notes under the dialogue, and the title sequence, set to Choir of Young Believers’ *Hollow Talk*, settles the tone in ninety seconds. Eight editors are credited, and between them they cut from Copenhagen to Malmö as if they were two rooms of one house.

The plots are where it strains. Every series has a killer with a plan, the plan has stages, and the stages need the killer to know things no killer could. The first series gets away with it because the killings are staged for the press and the show admits this is theatre. Ten episodes is two more than each story can fill, and somewhere around the sixth there is a stretch where Saga interviews people who turn out not to matter. When the body on the bridge is lifted in the first episode and comes apart at the waist, we were horrified, because the shot holds and nobody on screen screams. Nothing later frightened us half as much, though several series tried harder.

From the third series Bodnia is gone and Thure Lindhardt arrives as Henrik Sabroe, a Copenhagen detective with something badly wrong at home. His scenes with Helin run at a different temperature, two damaged people rather than one damaged person and one ordinary one. But the third series is the weakest, crowded with more suspects than it can hold, and it takes the fourth, at a tighter eight episodes, to find its shape. One early review found Saga hard to warm to beside Sarah Lund of *The Killing*. We think that is backwards. Lund chooses not to let people in; Saga cannot, and Helin lets us watch her try, which is the harder thing to sit through.

Watch it in Danish and Swedish with subtitles, two episodes an evening. If you have time for two series, stop after the second and you will have seen the best of it. If you go on, go on for Helin.

*Fi1m score 84, published 17 September 2026.*

### Reviews we read (5)

- **The Times** (90/100, inferred): The review praises the potent thriller as deftly constructed and potentially the best of the recent Scandi imports, highlighting its cross-border collaboration and strong narrative setup with a body found on the Oresund bridge. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/travel/destinations/europe-travel/norway/something-is-rotten-93wr8cfr706)
- **The i Paper**, Mark Butler (85/100, inferred): The critic calls The Bridge Scandi-noir’s most beloved and consistently rewarding TV saga since its 2011 debut, praising its ingenious mysteries and character work. Saga Noren stands out as a uniquely sympathetic and masterfully built lead whose quirks and depth drive the show’s appeal alongside strong supporting performances. [Read](https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/the-bridge-best-scandi-noir-170793)
- **The AV Club**, Molly Eichel (B+): The critic praises the original Scandinavian series as an entertaining, single-minded mystery that succeeds where its American remake falters, highlighting the strong central relationship between the two investigators and Saga's unique, childlike perspective on the world. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/the-bridge-s-source-material-hits-hulu-1798179404)
- **Radio Times**, Alison Graham (80/100, inferred): The critic bids an emotional farewell to the series, calling its ending note-perfect and satisfying as it lets Saga live on beyond the story. Helin’s performance as the unconventional, rule-bound detective is singled out for magnificence and the deep viewer connection it fostered over the run. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/the-bridge-final-episode-review/)
- **The Guardian** (70/100, inferred): The critic finds The Bridge gripping and haunting in its bleak Nordic noir style but notes the lead character Saga is hard to love compared to Sarah Lund, lacking the humanness of The Killing. It singles out the intriguing, unfeeling yet vulnerable central character and the atmospheric, unfriendly beauty of the series. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2012/apr/22/the-bridge-vera-tv-review)

## Details

- **Created by:** Hans Rosenfeldt
- **Creator:** Hans Rosenfeldt
- **Director:** Henrik Georgsson, Rumle Hammerich, Kathrine Windfeld, Charlotte Sieling, Morten Arnfred, Lisa Siwe
- **Writer:** Camilla Ahlgren, Nikolaj Scherfig, Måns Mårlind, Hans Rosenfeldt, Erik Ahrnbom, Björn Stein, Maren Louise Käehne, Astrid Øye, Morten Dragsted
- **Story:** Camilla Ahlgren, Nikolaj Scherfig, Måns Mårlind, Hans Rosenfeldt, Erik Ahrnbom, Astrid Øye, Veronica Zacco, Torleif Hoppe
- **Editor:** Thomas Lagerman, Sofia Lindgren, Sebastian Amundsen, Patrick Austen, Emil Stenberg, Thomas Täng, Margareta Lagerqvist, Kristofer Nordin
- **Music:** Johan Söderqvist, Uno Helmersson, Patrik Andrén
- **Production design:** Rickard Wirén, Peter De Neergaard, Niels Sejer, Søren Gam, Olle Remaeus
- **Costume design:** Kerstin Halvorsson
- **Producer:** Bo Ehrhardt, Anders Landström
- **Cast:** Sofia Helin as Saga Norén; Thure Lindhardt as Henrik Sabroe; Kim Bodnia as Martin Rohde; Mikael Birkkjær as Jonas; Rafael Pettersson as John Lundqvist; Emil Birk Hartmann as August Rohde; Julie Carlsen as Barbara; Elliott Crosset Hove as Kevin
- **Runtime:** 1h 00m
- **Certificate (MPA):** TV-MA
- **Release (the US):** 21 September 2011
- **Genres:** Crime, Mystery, Drama

## Where to watch in the US

- The Roku Channel: add-on, hd
- Amazon Prime Video: add-on
- Apple TV: add-on, hd

*Checked 2026-09-17.*

Also available in: AT, CA, CH, DE, ES, FR, GB, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## Awards

- Golden Nymph for Best European Drama TV Series 2014: Golden Nymph for Best European Drama TV Series (won)

## If you liked this

- *The Killing* (2007): The Copenhagen original with the jumper; slower, darker, and just as stubborn about its lead.
- *Spiral* (2005): Paris police and lawyers behaving badly across eight series; the French answer to all this.
- *Trapped* (2015): A body in an Icelandic fjord, a snowed-in town and a chief who will not stop.
- *Prime Suspect* (1991): Helen Mirren’s Jane Tennison, the difficult woman detective before the genre made a habit of them.
- *Top of the Lake* (2013): Jane Campion’s New Zealand mystery; landscape as character, and a detective carrying her own past.

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/the-bridge