Set in Copenhagen, The Killing debuted on Danish TV on January 7, 2007 — BBC4 didn’t run it until 2011 — and was initially built on the premise of following a crime investigation over 20 days in 20 episodes (seasons two and three tightened the focus to ten days/ten episodes). The first season dealt with the murder of 19 year-old Nanna Birk Larsen, the second explored the killing of lawyer Anne Dragsholm and the third followed the kidnapping of nine year-old Emilie Zeuthen.

“I felt a bit bored with the usual shows. Many of them were shows depicting a detective who had 45 minutes to solve a murder mystery and there was a serial killer and the next episode was exactly the same. At the same time, the heroine had her private life. She was dating the forensic guy. I just felt disillusioned. I felt it was unrealistic and I felt it was a recipe actually. So I wanted to do something more epic, something more novel-like. I didn’t want it to be just a police HQ story. I wanted it to be one killing uniting some characters living in a city. Everything was built up around the image of domino pieces falling: when one piece falls, everybody falls. I had this thought we could maybe tell a more realistic story about a murder than we had seen before. But the banal thing is that I just like thrillers. I like the whole idea of sending Sofie Gråbøl into dark basements.”