The Bridge (Bron) [** Spoilers **]

A woman is found murdered in the middle of Oresund Bridge, exactly on the border between Sweden and Denmark. Saga Noren from Malmo CID and Martin Rohde from the Copenhagen police department are called to the scene. What at first looks like one murder turns out to be two. The bodies have been brutally cut off at the waist and joined together - the torso of a high-profile Swedish politician and the lower body of a Danish prostitute. The Swedish and Danish police need to cooperate in a race against the clock, desperately searching for a murderer determined to go beyond all moral limits to get his message across.

Nibble tonight’s first two episodes of The Bridge and you will imediately want to devour the whole series. Just be careful not to break your teeth, because this is hard: a tough kernel of a gripping story wrapped in layers of rock. It makes The Killing seem cuddly.

But The Bridge is immensely rewarding: a proper, grown-up thriller dense with characters who aren’t instantly likeable or likeable at all, even after due consideration. Nordic noir fans will love it, and they will fall for its odd, brittle “heroine”, twitchy Swedish detective Saga Noren (Sofia Helin).

Saga isn’t a gimmicky maverick cop; neither is her Danish sidekick, Martin Rohde (Kim Bodnia), a hairy, shambling dad to many children, a mere jokey foil. The pair are thrown together when a body is found in the middle of the Oresund bridge linking Denmark and Sweden. As the joint investigation begins, prepare to enter the murky netherworlds of the dispossessed and the damaged as a determined serial killer decides to right society’s many wrongs.