What The Bridge tells us about Scandinavian social democracy – and why it’s not all good news.

This Saturday night I’ll be staying in to watch the final two episodes of The Bridge, the Scandinavian detective series on BBC4. I missed the first season of The Bridge when it was broadcast on BBC4 in 2012, but have since caught up on all ten episodes, as well as the first eight of season two in the past fortnight. I highly recommend it.

The bridge of the title is the one that links Malmö to Copenhagen, and the two central characters, a Swedish detective called Saga and a Danish detective called Martin, flit back and forth between the two cities. It’s hard for English viewers to keep track of which country they’re in because the two languages sound so similar. Nevertheless, you come away with a strong impression of Scandinavian society, both its strengths and weaknesses.

The programme is beautifully shot and, visually, both Malmö and Copenhagen are attractive. Both cities are great advertisements for modern architecture, as is the bridge that links them, the longest in Europe. They’re also much cleaner than London, in part because they’re less populous — another thing that makes them appealing. The impression you get is of a culture that values public spaces more highly than we do.

But in general the series isn’t a particularly ringing endorsement of Scandinavian social democracy. Judging from the backdrop to the crimes the detectives are investigating, Sweden and Denmark are beset by the same problems as Britain — poverty, drug addiction, homelessness, mental illness, etc. And when it comes to political extremism, they’re worse off than us if season two is anything to go by, with eco-terrorists constantly blowing things up and murdering people.

The most striking difference is that these Scandinavian countries have made a lot more headway than us when it comes to gender equality, but the makers of the programme are clear-eyed about the cost of such progress.