Borgen has a new season

So I was in Venice with Chanel. Let me repeat that: I was in Venice with Chanel. Five-star-plus hotel on the Canal Grande, a chilled bottle of champagne and a handwritten note from the hotel manager as a welcome, and a steaming city waiting for me. Its alleys, gates, churches, squares, the shop windows, the pigeons, the gondoliers; everything called my name. But I stayed inside. The reason? Borgen. I had to, would, and demanded the end of the series and refused to leave my room until I knew how it would end (SPOILER ALERT) with Birgitte's breast cancer.

As good stories go, they are a translation of reality. Sometimes a prediction too. Because Borgen is about the first female prime minister of Denmark and not long after, the country got its own woman as leader. Soon followed New Zealand, Finland, Estonia, and Lithuania, until eventually six European countries had a woman as head of state.

Borgen is as you would expect from a Scandinavian series. Smart, unadorned, unpolished, brilliantly acted, and realistic. You travel with Birgitte Nyborg who is uplifted by her profession, sees her marriage crumble, and only really takes a step back when her daughter faces severe mental issues. No one is extraterrestrially beautiful or equipped with washboard abs and E-cups and eyelashes to the ceiling. They are like us, and that makes it so wonderfully rare to watch.

Just a little anecdote that reveals my love for Borgen. At that time, you could only watch Borgen on DVD (we were still living in the BN, the Before Netflix era), so I had ordered the new seasons on DVD. To be able to watch the next episodes, I was so eager that I wanted to push the DVD out of its case so quickly that it broke. It broke. If there was a rehab clinic for people with a Borgen addiction, I would have signed up right then.

Borgen season 4 will be available on Netflix from June 2.