Radio Times: Review by:; Alison Graham

Detective Sarah Lund is celebrating a milestone — she’s been a police officer for 25 years. There’s cake in the squad room and a commendation ceremony. Lund’s mind is focused — she has had enough, she wants a new, cushier job, with the Danish police’s operative, planning and analysis unit, which, we learn, is a joke among her colleagues.

Lund is so distracted, so determined to get out of day-to-day policing, that she can barely be bothered when a man’s dismembered body is found in a scrapyard by Copenhagen’s docks. Can this really be the Sarah Lund we all know, remember and adore? Where’s the woman made of fire and steel?

As a general election rages and Denmark’s largest company, a shipbuilder, holds the government to ransom by threatening to move to Asia, it seems Lund is trapped by pen-pushing boredom... until that old, familiar glow returns. And when it does, it’s thrilling. Absolutely thrilling.

About this programme

1/10. New series. The Danish crime drama returns. With 10 days to go to the election in Denmark, Detective Chief Inspector Sarah Lund prepares to celebrate her 25th year in the police force and looks forward to the prospect of a new job in the service. But her relative peace is shattered when body parts are found at Copenhagen dock only hours before a scheduled visit by the prime minister. Starring Sofie Grabol.