Formato, encuadre y estructura de las sesiones

The review is not a dominating genre in the material (see table 2 below), but it nev-ertheless continues to be an important contribution to the circulation of taste in contemporary media culture (Kristensen & From 2011, Kristensen & From 2015c).

In the data material on Borgen we find reviews in all three newsbrands that discuss the qualities of the series. They are written by journalists, some of whom have expert

Table 1. Number of articles and number of unique bylines

Period/byline Berlingske, DK The Telegraph, UK Svenska Dagbladet, S Season 1 19.09.10-05.12.10 66 01.01.12-11.02.12 19 26.01.11-13.04.11 3 Between 1&2 06.12.10-17.09.11 38 12.02.12-29.12.12 35 14.04.11-05.05.12 4 Season 2 18.09.11-04.12.11 44 30.12.12-09.02.13 24 06.05.12-30.07.12 1 Between 2&3 05.12.11-24.12.12 98 10.02.13-08.11.13 16 31.07.12-14.04.13 20 Season 3 25.12.12-17.03.13 104 09.11.13-21.12.13 25 15.04.13-08.07.13 8 After season 3 18.03.13-31.10.15 198 22.12.13-31.10.15 46 09.07.13-31.10.15 25

Unique bylines 165 61 26

No. of articles 548 165 61

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is Berlingske, where Borgen was reviewed mainly by two reviewers. In the first season, Karen Margrethe Schelin for example wrote two reviews. Karen Margrethe Schelin² studied at the Danish School of Media and Journalism and has covered a broad range of cultural topics (like gender and fashion), and does not have specific educational expertise in the field of culture and television, even though she has a lot of experience reviewing and commenting on television. Meanwhile, Jacob Steen Olsen, who wrote reviews for the second and third season, has degrees in dramaturgy and media stud-ies³; and even though he writes journalistic pieces in many different cultural beats, he has an expertise grounded in his educational background and therefore could be termed a ‘classic cultural intermediary’.

To exemplify, the reviews in Berlingske comprised considerations about genres and whether actors performed as convincing characters or not. Moreover, Borgen was evaluated according to its capability to create identification – for example: “The series has many qualities […] many people will be able to recognise and identify with the everyday situations that these top politicians experience in their private lives” (Olsen 2011). The reviews also considered themes taken up by the series such as equality and gender, and discussed whether these themes mirrored existing conflicts in real life (Olsen 2011). The reviews were typically written in a formal style, and in general evaluated Borgen as a mainstream phenomenon aligned with rather than challenging international production values.

TV critics at Svenska Dagbladet did not follow the ups and downs of the series through regular reviews, despite an enthusiastic review of one of the first episodes of Borgen headlined “Danish series sets TV screens on fire” (Amster 2011). In fact, it was two years before the second of two reviews appeared at the start of the broadcasting of the third season. The reviews were written by Harry Amster, who has reviewed televison for many years and also has a special interest in music,⁴ and Anna Hellsten, who is a freelance journalist writing on popular culture in general (e.g. food, fashion, music, film, and TV).⁵

Both of these reviews were in a similar style to those printed in Berlingske concern-ing themselves mainly with issues of dramaturgy. In the first review, Harry Amster discussed the series’ mix of classical drama with soap dramaturgy and how the director and actors managed to create characters that the viewers cared about, concluding by calling the series “good craftsmanship” (Amster 2011). In the second review, Anna Hellsten reflected on the positive reception of the series at home and argued that TV series should be assessed as TV fiction, rather than on their ability to reflect reality.

In that sense the evaluations were based on clear professional criteria for reviews (van Rees 1987), even though the journalists claim their authority from cultural journalism in general rather than from the specific beat of reviewing cultural products.

Whilst the reviewers at Svenska Dagbladet approached Borgen on only a few oc-casions, Borgen was covered more intensely by the designated TV critics at The Tel-egraph. All three seasons were shown in two-episode instalments on BBC Four, and these instalments were consistently picked out for reviewing. The task of reviewing

KIRSTEN SPARRE & UNNI FROM

was shared by a number of reviewers who were all overwhelmingly positive in their descriptions of the qualities of the series. In contrast to the reviews in Berlingske and Svenska Dagbladet, The Telegraph’s reviewers adopted a conversational style in their writing using a lively and engaging voice to recount their personal experience of watching the latest instalment. The reviews often created the impression that the TV critic was sitting on the couch next to the reader in order to discuss what to think about developments in the series, as in this review by the renowned TV critic Clive James,⁶ who wrote the majority of Borgen reviews in The Telegraph:

Devoted viewers of the marvellous Danish political serial Borgen (BBC Four) are now faced with the possibility that they will have to down-rate the tail-chasing Kasper (Pilou Asbæk) from a louse to a mere cad. We can now be sure that his bad behaviour all goes back to an abused childhood. (James 2013)

A key characteristic of reviews in all three newsbrands was the use of the device of making references to events, people and other media texts that were external to the series. This web of writing devices constituted tastemaking in different ways.

One very strong tastemaking device was the use of intertextual references in the form of references to other TV series, specific characters or plotlines in other TV series or even other cultural products such as books or films. Particularly in The Telegraph there were many intertextual references between Borgen and the other successful Danish TV serial, The Killing, which was broadcast around the same time and paved the way for Danish drama on British television. In this way, journalists confirmed that Borgen was a high-quality product in line with other successful Danish drama productions, the so-called ‘Nordic Noir tradition’ (see e.g. Jensen, Nielsen & Waade 2016), which “appeal to audiences that are likely to include the more influential and trendsetting segments of the population; that is, the segments with a high cultural, intellectual and possibly financial capital” (Jensen 2016, no page numbers).

Being picked out of the vast range of TV series and becoming a benchmark is a tastemaking device that is not bestowed on many series. But it happened relatively often to Borgen in the British context, and our sample contains a number of articles where Borgen later became a benchmark for other series too. The catalogue of texts that are suitable for intertextual references obviously depends on particular national and cultural contexts. In Sweden, Svenska Dagbladet’s reviewer was able to draw on a much wider catalogue of TV series to benchmark against because his readers had been exposed to more Danish series on Swedish television than the British audience:

In some ways I think it comes down to the ability of the Danish directors and ac-tors to create real characters that I like and care about. Just like the previous series Krøniken and Nikolaj & Julie. You become emotionally involved. (Amster 2011) Other devices in the reviews involved comparing characters and events in the series to real-life politicians and their actions, or including frames of reference that were shared by a given national audience such as a remark in a review in Berlingske that “DR

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has probably regretted that they did not do a drama series on Hanne Vibeke Holst’s novels” (Schelin 2010). For readers, these devices provide a context for understand-ing Borgen, but they also serve explicitly as tastemakunderstand-ing for the series because they show how relevant the reviewers believe the series to be as a portrayal of politics and modern life. However, it should be pointed out that references to real-life politicians also appeared in other genres across the three newsbrands, as we will see in the next part of the analysis.