The Killing is getting a bigger audience than Mad Men, which is pretty good considering it is subtitled. OK I have a theory (didn't you know it). I think that British audiences feel a cultural affinity with other Northern European countries, which overcomes the language barrier. The Killing is obviously foreign, with unfamiliar politics and customs, but its values feel agreeable and accessible to me - and it seems to many other people.
You know I love some American TV shows, but I feel sometimes I have to mentally translate them. Breaking Bad, for example, is set in a world massively different from mine - the driver of the plot is that a man will die unless he can make enough money to pay for medical treatment.
I don't know if this friendliness to European values has implications for the neo-Liberal Atlanticist project. Well, ahem, I may be reading too much into the popularity of one show. But I think there is a mood among educated British people which is increasingly receptive to Northern European models.
On to the content of the show. I will not give spoilers, but I think for the first time that we may be consolidating down to some firm facts. It's possible that by next week we will know who the killer is, and have a better idea of how politics and crime are interwoven here. Or I may be totally misinterpreting things. Personally I'd rather not learn the truth already. I'd prefer it all left ambiguous and shady. But if you are watching it - I was kind of developing a theory of who the killer was as I watched this week, and that view became stronger as the show progressed. Hope that's vague enough.
(ETA - on that cultural affinity thing - BBC4 is showing a Spanish crime drama, with subtitles, right now, and I feel I have less in common with the culture depicted than I do to Danish culture. For example the gender roles. I'm not saying lack of familiarity is a bad thing, it's just not so immediately accessible.)