Danmark is a long way from the bucolic charms, stately homes and historic country churches of the beautiful but stunningly murderous English county of Midsomer.
But then Midsomer Murders has come a long way, 100 episodes, in fact, since it first began with The Killings at Badger's Drift in 1997.
The show that has featured a full 300 dastardly killings features Denmark, a slice of the fabulous Scandinavian television masterpiece Forbrydelsen, and Badger's Drift, as it marks its centenary with The Killings in Copenhagen on Prime on November 30.
Midsomer, of course, is the British television detective drama based on the books by Caroline Graham.
DCI John Barnaby (Neil Dudgeon), of Causton CID, is the main man, the fictional younger cousin of former lead character DCI Tom Barnaby (John Nettles), who solved the crimes in episode one.
The Killings in Copenhagen begins in Denmark, (incidentally, Midsomer Murders is called Kriminalkommisaer Barnaby in that country), with a man entering a smart hotel, and being handed a brown cardboard box by reception staff.
He takes it to his room, and finds inside a tin of Palmer's biscuits, but opens the tin to find it empty.
Or is it?
Moments later, he stands on the balcony, as a sinister dark-haired fellow looks on from the street.
He begins to hallucinate, staggers back into the hotel, and expires quite dramatically in the bathroom: poisoned.
Enter the Pretty Blonde and Appealing Stern Danish Police Squad, made up of Detective Poulsen (Ann Eleonora Jorgenson, who played Pernille Birk Larsen, the mother of the murder victim in series one of Forbrydelsen), and Detective Degn (Birgitte Hjort Sorensen).
They soon discover the victim is Eric Calder, a British gentleman behind Calder's Biscuit Company.
Poulsen reads ''Greetings from Badger's Drift'', on the decorated biscuit tin lid, and looks, bemused, into the distance.
The Killings in Copenhagen features plenty of cross-cultural embarrassment: ''It's very clean, it's very flat,'' says Barnaby's new chum DS Nelson (Gwilym Lee) as he tries to explain to the Danish detectives his first impressions of their country.
All that sets up another gentle and amusing Midsomer Murders, as Barnaby and Nelson help their Danish colleagues solve what quickly becomes two murders.
TV One, meanwhile has announced it will be showing a contemporary revamp of the Thunderbirds, titled Thunderbirds Are Go, a co-production from ITV (which incidentally airs Midsomer Murders in the United Kingdom) and Pukeko Pictures, in its line-up for 2015.
The new series will feature animation from New Zealand's Weta Workshop.
- Charles Loughrey
