Borgen
The Killing was a TV
series which interwove a police drama with a political drama and was
a great success on BBC 4. In the series Borgen the same producers
concentrate on the political shenanigans in the Danish parliament.
It is not written from
a socialist perspective but what it does show is the political elite
and the media in bed with each other (quite literally in one strand
of the story).
One gets the sense from
Borgen that the media and political elite live in a comfortable
incestuous environment and the one group not heard in this political
democracy is …. the people.
The latest episode
shows a female prime minister trying to implement a modest reform. A
bill calling for 50 percent of all boardroom appointments to be
female. The government would carry out punitive taxation measures
against any firm which did not go along with it. Ostensibly feminist
it is not a measure which would benefit the overwhelming majority of
Danish women.
I won't detail the plot
because I think you should watch the show. Look out for media smears
used to discredit a minister proposing this measure; a strike of
capital aimed at allowing big business to dictate to the government
and more than one rotten compromise.
The Labour Party are
present as a comic turn responding to advances by the far right by
trying to prove they can be every bit as racist, misogynist and
Islamophobic as the fascists!
It is alternately
political and deeply personal; searingly serious and hilariously
funny; foreign and all too familiar!
Watch it.
Borgen fyi is a slang term for parliament in Denmark - "the castle" where the political elite meet.
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