They don’t kill her! Her being Saga Norén, of course, and they being lots of people, including Susanne, AKA Steph, and Brian, AKA Kevin. And most of all writer Hans Rosenfeldt, who, having created one of television’s most enigmatic, alluring characters, could so easily have killed her off.

Rosenfeldt has hardly been shy of killing over the four series of The Bridge (BBC2). Saga’s death would have seemed a natural way to go out, a way to avoid uncharacteristic sentimentality, and scotch any rumours of reincarnations. I was prepared for it, expecting it even. Instead … well, we’ll come to that.

It’s been a stormy season, which started with a bang. Or rather, the sick thud of stone to head. (Do your nightmares persist, too?) Then it got lost in the Nordic murk, where a supershoal of red herrings lurked, then rolled themselves up, skewered and pickled themselves in a bloody act of self-loathing rollmop revenge.



A massive late-breaking flashback was required, to see or make sense of anything. And a sizeable ask: that someone (and then someone else) would do vengeance on such a grand and elaborate scale. But it came back together, not just dramatically, but so movingly with Henrik’s reunion with his daughter Astrid. She can’t be taken away again can she, at the very end? I’m not sure I, let alone Henrik, could take that. No, because Saga is such a legend.



For detailed analysis of the finale see Graeme Virtue’s brilliant episode recap. Briefly, more shots are fired; tears are shed; sex is had (in Saga’s perfunctory way); then a more meaningful kiss; resolution; and the realisation, for Saga, that it was guilt that has been driving her.

So, she moves in with Henrik and Astrid to laugh and eat duck happily ever after. Don’t be daft, that would have been wrong.



No, the end is perfect, definitive and beautiful. It avoids schmaltz and death, and features the three stars who have been there from the very beginning. One is human, the creation of Rosenfeldt; the others are works of engineering, mechanical and structural.

Saga is off, on a voyage of self-discovery. She steps into her mustard coloured vintage Porsche, and drives away, across the Øresund Bridge. She stops – not to throw herself off, to join her sister, but to throw her badge into the flow. Now, no longer “Saga Norén Länskrim Malmö” when she answers the phone, she is just Saga Norén. God I’m going to miss her, and The Bridge.