The Spider

Suffering from the shortages and shady business transactions following the Nazi occupation of Denmark, the citizens of Copenhagen are still slogging through the grey zone of the post-war era; the orderly decade of the 1950s hasn’t arrived yet. City gangsters and black marketeers are having the time of their lives – they can lay their hands on anything from extra ration coupons, booze and cigarettes to American cars. Against this backdrop of scheming and fraud, Bjarne Madsen is an idealistic young journalist desperate to provide his readers with some hard evidence of the ongoing corruption. But the newspaper already has a regular crime reporter, the deeply honorable H.C. Vissing, who bases his work on mutual trust with the police. After receiving a tip-off about the scale of organized crime in Copenhagen, Bjarne sees an opportunity to unravel the threads of an extensive criminal spiders web; his ambitions to report on a really big story have finally become a reality. Vissing and the editor-in-chief, Taulov, think the story is too far-fetched to be legitimate, but Bjarne follows his leads among the crooks and politicians to seek out the truth. In the course of the investigation, he falls for the charms of the captivating diva, Lisbeth Gordon. And as luck would have it, so does his brother, Ole. This immensely popular Danish mini-series stars Lars Mikkelsen (Borgen, Sherlock) and Jakob Cedergren (The Eagle). Average share: 55 %.