The Bridge - Complete Season Four

In the final instalment of the hugely popular Scandi Noir crime drama, Swedish detective Saga Norèn, Malmö CID, is forced to confront her personal demons like never before and the same can be said for her Danish colleague/lover Henrik Sabroe. Despite a personal whirlwind the pair steer toward a huge challenge as they face their trickiest case yet!

When Margarethe Thormond, Director General of the Immigration Board, is found stoned to death underneath the now famous Bridge of the title, it appears to be a pretty straightforward case: only previously some members of her board were celebrating a deportation case concerning a gay Iranian man called Taariq who faces execution upon his return. Was Taariq the murderer? Or is radical and left-wing human rights group Red October behind it? Both theories sound plausible though we know that in THE BRIDGE, nothing is ever that straightforward and most certainly it isn’t here!
While Henrik Sabroe (Thure Lindhardt) and his new colleague, the slightly dubious Jonas (Mikael Birkkjaer) follow the first clues, Saga Norén (Sofia Helin) has to sit it out in the slammer for apparently killing her mother. Thankfully an appeal is on the horizon which acquits her and yep, Sweden’s most troubled detective soon joins the equally troubled Henrik (who still believes his two missing daughters are alive somewhere) in trying to solve the puzzle surrounding Thormond’s brutal death.

But as the investigation continues, more and more characters keep popping up who may or may not have some involvement with Thormond’s killing, not least the lose-as-a-canon taxi driver (and abusive husband) who was the last person to see the murdered woman alive. Then there are the two twin brothers, one a journalist with apparent links to Red October, the other an imposter who usually pretends to be his journalist brother in order to get laid. Then there are the two teenage runaway girls cum pickpockets who inadvertently get drawn into the case and Henrik, still grieving over the mysterious disappearance of his own daughters, takes his social care duties perhaps a little too far.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg for the body count increases and soon Saga establishes that each victim has been murdered via very specific methods of execution: stoning, gassing, electrocution and so forth – leaving room for some more potential victims. Who will be next? And why?
On the private front things reach boiling point between Henrik and Saga when she reveals that she is pregnant with his baby but doesn’t really want it. One can’t help but feeling increasingly sorry for poor Henrik who tries so hard with her but as we all know, Saga is not an easy person to get along with. Both seek professional help in this fourth instalment – Henrik for his previous drug addiction and trauma over the loss of his family and Saga over too many things to mention here!
As befits a high quality crime drama like this, unexpected twists and turns lurk at every corner and indeed the case turns out to be more complex than Brexit negotiations… To top it all, it transpires that the one common link to all the ghastly killings lies in the past and indirectly involves Henrik…

To reveal more would be spoiling the broth but at the end of this case we know that it is the end for good: briefly stopping at Oresund Bridge, Saga throws her police badge into the water below. Seconds later when her mobile rings she no longer answers with the familiar “Saga Norén, Malmö CID” but simply just with her name before she drives on.
This fourth and final instalment is simply terrific, not least because our detectives are confronted with a case that couldn’t be closer connected to the current ‘Zeitgeist’. Shame Henrik and Saga didn’t end up together after all, that said it is suggested they will keep in touch and with Saga this could go either way. As ever, Sofia Helin and Thure Lindhardt give fantastic and utterly believable performances and it’s a shame THE BRIDGE will not be resurrected for further cases. Alas, all good things eventually come to an end and at least Season 4 pulls out all the stops for one cracking finale!