Les héritiers

Good story, good script, magnificent interpretations. Entertaining, comical, dramatic, it has everything, it's a great series. The naturalness of the interpretations, the realism and the lack of pretensions are magnificent. At the time I missed it because here, in Spain, has not been just publicized as other more famous series (some of them very overrated and boring). I need a fourth season! Please, please, please

It is difficult to not give this series a 10, but one always imagines something can be better. In this story, set in Funen, the island of Hans Christian Anderson, a family encounters itself in all its complex, passionate, devious depths. The writer Maya Ilsøe is superb -- fascinating concerns with truth and lie, with nature and art, with the truth about fathers and mothers, and the deviations of children who have to live with their lies.

The tale is sensitively brought to our eyes by intelligent actors and producers. I have long been a fan of Danish TV, and this lives up to the best of it. Hoping for a strong 3rd season, which I understand will be the last.

With programs like Forbrydelsen and Borgen, Danmarks Radio has secured an international reputation as a powerhouse for serial drama, and this continues in spades with Arvingerne. Writing, acting, directing, etc., all show a level of artistic merit that puts the great majority of UK and American shows to shame (that's why BBC rebroadcasts them and US networks like AMC make crappy remakes). This is a new genre choice, however: the dynastic family drama, centering on the four squabbling children of a hippie artist mother from the sixties. I binge-watched it in 3 days, something very rare for me. In particular, Carsten Bjørnlund, a Forbrydelsen alum, is brilliant in the role of deeply damaged son Frederik, but all the principals are compelling. Just beginning to be available, in various ways, with English subtitles, but definitely worth seeking out.

Signe Larsen, a young woman from relatively modest stock--working in a flower shop--discovers she was adopted and that her real family is a rich and decadent lot, fighting over the titular legacy of her recently deceased mother.

This sounds like a terribly worn out premise, but the writers actually succeed in transfiguring it by carefully avoiding the vulgar clichés we might expect: this is 'Dallas' alright, but 'Dallas' for the XXist century. The dead mother was not an oil magnate but a conceptual artist, the brothers and sisters are curators, lawyers and beach bums, all rather bohemian in their own privileged way. In place of gold watches and sports cars, we have conspicuous displays of cultural capitals (art books, white cubes and subdued designer dresses.) Behind this urbane and cultured façade, however, J. R. has nothing on any of them: Gro the curator dress her self-interest as selfless dedication to her mother's memory, Emil's devil-may-care altruism is fueled by privilege and self-indulgence, Thomas is perpetually escaping from his responsibility, and Frederik alone wears his stony heart on his sleeve.

The result is a populist Cinderella: Signe stands for honest work and common sense. Her decadent siblings, with their high-falutin modern culture and high-minded hypocrisy, are the fabled 'cosmopolitan elite'. But Avringerne is not *genuinely* populist: it is too well written, too well acted, too tastefully produced to appeal to the little man. Signe, pure as a lamb, perpetually turning the other cheek, is also the least compelling of the characters. This is a populist tale not for the little man but for the self-hating cosmopolitan elite.

The result is compelling: acutely observed, well cast, restrained and mostly credible. It does suffer from the failings of its soap opera model: as the episode count rises, the accumulation of peripeteia inevitably becomes less and less believable, so that by the end of the first season the viewer is already hard-pressed to suspend disbelief. By the end of the second, it has all become quite strained and repetitive. One wishes the writers had spread out their episode in time, avoiding thereby the artificiality of perpetual emergency and giving their characters time to grow.

This is one of those series that you either love or hate. There's hardly anything in between. Three seasons show how all kinds of things are happening within a family, but nothing ever really changes. It is however better than your average soap if you like drama, failing relationships, people not learning from earlier mistakes and all kinds of other psychological issues. It's going nowhere but kept me watching, because of the setting, curiosity and also the great acting. At times it feels as if you're watching a documentary instead of a television series. Just try it. You will find out soon enough if this is something for you.

The reason I gave it only 7 stars is the fact that the series just has too much storylines that start but are not finished properly. I consider that to be a major flaw in the scenario next to the sometimes terrible leaps in time, where you can only conclude that there obviously has been some kind of development.