Borgen, like The Simpsons: on Netflix the alarming predictions of the political series are raging

Borgen It’s like The Simpsons. The series currently in vogue on Netflix is ​​not animated, nor is it a comedy, much less American. But Homer, Lisa, Bart, margin Y Maggie they have something in common with the Danes: the crystal ball.

There were many crystal balls: in dragon ballin the literature of the Brothers Grimm, on the poster of a famous Spanish series from the 1980s. Today, the bearers of the esoteric object are two creative minds of the TV: Matt Groening and Adam Price.

“Adam has a crystal ball, he always has it, and he doesn’t talk about it,” he says without proof or doubt Sidse Babett Knudsenactress who plays the protagonist of Borgen, the Price series.

Both The Simpsons and the Danish show are fiction sets designed to predict the future. In one case, this gift makes people laugh; in the other it is scary. Both are filled with what are commonly referred to as “predictions” on Twitter. Although Groening’s program is at the top, and by far, of the chart of successes, The price is not far behind.

The Simpsons foretold through sequences, scenes and shots; more serious jokes and conversations; recurring characters and cameos; various episodes of recent history.

Serious issues ranging from the January 6 bombings on Capitol Hill and the fall of the Twin Towers to the wounding of Neymar in Brazil 2014, the creation of the Kindle or the invention of the Farmville game could not escape the predictive power of Groening and his writers.

Borgen, on the other hand, has anticipated the Danish political scene several times over the past decade. The price thing is more niche. Before listing why the work of these talented Nordics is also a serious matter, It is worth highlighting a little the context in which his popular project was born and developed.

What is “El Castillo” doing?

Borgen has just released what would be his fourth season. The potential of the verb “to be” is due to the following: no member of the production has stated that the new episodes properly constitute a fourth season. Indeed, the program is called Borgen: Kingdom, power and glorynot Borgen 4.

Unlike the other three seasons, which have ten episodes each, “Kingdom, Power and Glory” has eight and its story focuses on a specific theme: Greenland (and all that this huge piece of land dependent on Denmark implies).

And not only. There are now secondary characters who are much more preponderant than before. These are called the United States, Russia and China. Do they sound like you?

Another surprising aspect is that this kind of fourth part has come almost a decade after the end of the third. And it did so for the first time on Netflix, since the previous ones – although now also available on the platform – were initially broadcast by the local Danmarks Radio signal.

Borgen’s soul, the absolute protagonist, is Birgitte Nyborg, the first woman who, in fiction, manages to be Prime Minister of Denmark. Important: The series, while it may not seem like it, is not based on real events.

In the plot, the Moderate, Labor, Green and other parties battle for power in front and behind the scenes as the protagonist, who starts out as the leader of the first of the three aforementioned groups, tries to hold the political baton without destabilizing even his life. personal.

Borgen, which colloquially means “Castle” and refers to Christiansborg Palace, the place where the twisted Danish system is intertwined, was released in 2010 and continued in 2011, 2013 and, now, 2022.

Guess guess

“We would have crossed it out in the writers’ room and said it was too much,” Price told The Irish Times of everything that was happening in the post-Borgen Danish political universe.

The most impressive prediction in the series is also the most obvious: having introduced Prime Minister Nyborg in the first season, as soon as the second premiered. Helle Thorning-Schmidt she was elected to office, eventually becoming the first “real” woman to hold it in Denmark.

Years later, the minister who would have been Prime Minister from 2011 to 2015 would say, perhaps clouded by Borgen’s premonitory virtues, that he would have avoided watching the series so as not to be influenced by anything.

Another work of the crystal ball had to do with the day the deputy Never Henriksen she publicly supported the rights of sex workers in unison with the premiere of an episode in which Birgitte talks about legalizing prostitution. It must be remembered that this type of series is produced months – and even years – before the day of their release.

In another episode, we see how some characters make fun of the imaginary Foreign Minister for not knowing English, a gesture that would be repeated almost two years later when the real minister, Villy Sovndal, the same thing happened to him. Chance?

The first few seasons, almost like someone who doesn’t want the thing, too advance which parties would have ministers in the Thorning-Schmidt cabinet. Because yes, Borgen’s matches are equivalent to real ones.

The latest prediction in this short selection, almost as incredible as Thorning-Schmidt’s, comes to the fore in Season 4. To avoid spoilers here we will deal with clues: it has to do with Russia and is at the end of the pilot episode.

Locals and outsiders ensure that if they don’t have the aforementioned crystal ball, Price got what he did by simply researching and guessing. In each interview on the series, the three screenwriters, in a gesture of great humility, emphasize that theirs is pure memory, calculation and chance. If something has happened in the world of politics, it’s possible that it will happen again, think the trio, objectively. And that doesn’t leave us very calm.

This theory, the earthly one, is not as funny as the esoteric one, so if it turns out to be valid, we will be content to believe that Price, Jeppe Gjervig grandfather Y Tobia Lindholm (the showrunner and his two parts) have, who knows where, a small spherical device that, just by rubbing it and seeing it, predicts the future of their country through images that follow one another.