Follow The Money, BBC4, TV review: Who knew financial crime could be this much fun?
Follow the Money expertly plays up differences between what we want to see and the bleaker reality
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It sometimes seems as though you can hardly move these days without finding a classy Nordic drama. If it’s not The Bridge it’s Borgen. If not Thicker Than Water then Trapped. Danish drama Follow the Money is the latest series to arrive on BBC4, and it promises to be just as stealthily addictive as the rest.
It began, as these things so often do, with a body. In this case that of a worker at a local wind farm who was fished out of the sea by stoic police officer Mads (Thomas Bo Larsen). Meanwhile, over in London, charismatic clean energy entrepreneur Sander (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) was presenting his vision of a green future to London investment companies.
Throw into the mix a young car thief and an ambitious lawyer and the seeds were set for a complicated tale of financial fraud, corporate corruption, organised crime and the lies big businesses tell.
Adding to the appeal is our vision of the Danish as somehow inherently good people. There they are in their perfectly designed houses living their ecologically friendly lives and embracing the cold winter months with warm jerseys and nice smelling spiced wine. They couldn’t possibly be guilty of the sort of financial misconduct that dogs institutions around the world. Or could they?
Follow the Money expertly played up the differences between what we want to see and the bleaker reality. Sander prowled around his empty modernist palace and cycled through London to be interviewed by the BBC. Mads watched sadly as his wife, who has multiple sclerosis, read Harry Potter to their son in a scene glowing with warmth. Claudia conducted business in the sleek, open-planned offices of Sander’s company Energreen. This, the series seemed to be saying, is the perfect life.
Except, of course, it wasn’t. By the end of the first two episodes Mads was investigating Energreen with the help of the fraud squad, Claudia was beginning to realise that her longed-for promotion might have strings attached, Sander was taking meetings with shadowy men and starting to look altogether less clean than the energy he was so energetically promoting and an addictive, tightly plotted thriller was unfolding. Who knew financial crime could be this much fun?
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