The creator of The Bridge has revealed that the fourth series of the acclaimed Scandinavian drama will be the last.



The hit murder mystery starring Sofia Helin as detective Saga Norén was watched by 2 million viewers on BBC4, one of the most popular of the new breed of foreign dramas to come to the UK.

Anna Friel feels the cut of ITV's stab in the Nordic dark Read more

Hans Rosenfeldt – whose first UK drama Marcella, starring Anna Friel, began with more than 6 million viewers on ITV this week – said actor Kim Bodnia, who left the show over creative differences at the end of series two after his character Martin Rohde was imprisoned for murder, could yet return to the show for its final run.

Rosenfeldt said he had started writing the fourth series with its stars, Helin and Thure Lindhardt, who played her new Danish partner Henrik Sabroe, already understood to be on board.

The third series ended last year with the pair beginning their search for Henrik’s two missing daughters and the murderer of his wife. But Rosenfeld said viewers might be surprised where the new series picks up.

“I think there will be a fourth one but that will be the last one,” Rosenfeldt told the Guardian. “We have a storyline. It’s a different place where they start, a very different place.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Danish actor Kim Bodnia, whose character, Martin Rohde, was imprisoned for murder. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

Swedish broadcaster SVT and Denmark’s DR have yet to officially commission the show, but Rosenfeldt said: “Hopefully there is a fourth series coming now; I’d be very surprised if they say no.”

Bodnia, one of the show’s two original stars, left because he was unhappy with the direction of series three.

Rosenfeldt said: “We parted as friends, he just didn’t want to do what we wanted to do. We wanted him out [of prison] and he wanted to stay in and that was very hard for us. He said fine, you do what you want but you have to do it without me.

“There’s nothing saying he can’t come back if the story requires it, if we think something really good can come out of him coming back. We have proved the show is doing well without him. He’s not dead – he’s still in prison – but it can’t be for nostalgia, it has to be that we really think that it benefits the show.”

Bodnia’s exit, six months before they were due to start filming, meant several storylines were changed, including the fate of Swedish police chief Hans Petterson, played by Dag Malmberg, who died in series three.

“We had already decided the third series should be more about Saga but we had to rethink a lot of things which was really good for the show as it turned out,” said Rosenfeldt.

“In the original scripts Hans didn’t die, it was Martin’s boss, Lillian. When Martin wasn’t in it, there was no reason to kill her and it worked better with Hans killed off instead. He wasn’t really happy about that.”

The Bridge has inspired several foreign adaptations, including Sky Atlantic’s The Tunnel, starring Clémence Poésy and Stephen Dillane, which will return for a second series next week, and the latest offshoot based at the border between Russia and Estonia.

The Bridge began on BBC4 four years ago, cementing UK viewers’ appetite for subtitled Saturday night drama after the success of the first two series of The Killing. Channel 4 has launched its own foreign drama strand, Walter Presents, and had a hit with German cold war drama, Deutschland 83.

More recent BBC4 hits include Icelandic drama Trapped, watched by more than 1 million viewers and described as the unlikeliest TV hit of the year.

Of the UK’s enthusiasm for Nordic series, Rosenfeldt said: “It’s funny because for years everyone in Sweden used to look at England and say why can’t we do drama like that? Now we don’t look down on ourselves so much.”

Rosenfeldt, a “huge Marvel fan”, said he would “love to do a superhero show” but he would have to do it outside of his home country of Sweden. “There will never be someone commissioning a superhero show in Sweden. Actually, we did, a show called The Befallen in 2003, about paranormal activities. I’m so proud of it I think it’s one of the best shows I’ve done. Absolutely nobody watched it.”