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Netflix and Borgen: A Match Made in…?

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TV Drama in the Multiplatform Era

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Abstract

US-owned but globally ambitious subscription video-on-demand (SVoD) services have become increasingly involved in different stages of the production lifecycle of local drama series. This chapter focuses on one such case, namely the renewed fourth season of critically acclaimed Danish serial, Borgen, entitled Borgen: Power and Glory, which was released in 2022 by the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) and subsequently on Netflix. Borgen was an in-house flagship production for DR’s drama division and central to the international success of Danish TV drama in the 2010s. However, the new season is the result of a collaboration between DR and Netflix and was also commissioned from a private production company, SAM Productions. Taking a wider media/political context into consideration, this chapter discusses this paradoxical turn of events and the controversies raised by the new production arrangements. Key sources for the chapter are extended interviews with showrunner, Adam Price, as well as documents from the Danish Cultural Committee about the collaboration and funding arrangements for this production.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The English title lacks interpretive keys embedded in the Danish title. Riget alludes to the ‘Danish Kingdom’: Denmark, Greenland and the Faroese Islands. Riget, magten og æren is also embedded in the Danish translation of the Lord’s Prayer.

  2. 2.

    The research design and key findings of this study were also presented to DR (Nielsen, 2022) but were never presented in a research publication.

  3. 3.

    Former Head of Fiction, Nadia Kløvedal Reich, mentions 5 million DKK as an estimated episode budget of a DR Sunday series and that only 4–5 per cent of their budget was external funding (Nielsen, 2012a). The precise budgets for Borgen cannot be determined but analyses by KPMG and Struensee & Co of DR’s economy provide yearly budgets for the drama division including 2013, when season 3 of Borgen was produced (KPMG and Struensee 2018: 48).

  4. 4.

    I had conversations with management at both DR (before the premiere) and Netflix (after the premiere) about the recent season of Borgen. Although their input could potentially supply interesting nuances and different points of view, I was mainly confirmed in my assessment that Price was the key source.

  5. 5.

    For example, Søren Espersen (2009) accused DR and then Head of Drama, Ingolf Gabold, of political leftism half a year before the show went into production.

  6. 6.

    The answer from DR does not state length but two months passed from DR’s 13 February 2022 release to the 14 April release on Netflix in the Nordic countries and 2 June release in the rest of Netflix’s markets.

  7. 7.

    The former head of Danish Film Directors, Christina Rosendahl (2022), expressed strong criticism of Netflix’ influence on Danish film, as did film producer Regnar Grasten (Bruun & Christensen, 2022), whereas former Head of Drama at DR, Piv Bernth, countered some of those arguments (Rømer Olsen, 2022). Given Netflix’s activities in Denmark it is unsurprising to a find a split in relation to serial fiction vs film and in relation to having/not having worked for international streaming services.

  8. 8.

    Netflix’s consultation response was kindly provided to me by Jasmijn Touw (Head of Policy Nordics and Benelux, Netflix).

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Acknowledgements

This research was conducted within the framework of the ScreenMe project (EU Horizon2020, grant number 952156).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

    Jakob Isak Nielsen

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  1. Jakob Isak Nielsen
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Correspondence to Jakob Isak Nielsen .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Media and Communication Programme, Te Herenga Waka/Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

    Trisha Dunleavy

  2. Department of English & Creative Arts, Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, UK

    Elke Weissmann

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Nielsen, J.I. (2023). Netflix and Borgen: A Match Made in…?. In: Dunleavy, T., Weissmann, E. (eds) TV Drama in the Multiplatform Era. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35585-1_3

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