26/03/2025 - The fantastic Trine Dyrholm is a neighbour from hell or an angel of justice, depending on how you feel about cats, in Benedikt Erlingsson’s series

There’s nothing as satisfying as watching someone stand up for their rights, flatly refusing to take any crap. Maybe because most of us don’t do that; we opt to “take the high road” when disrespected, refuse to “sink to someone’s level”, yet still leave the interaction feeling defeated. Trying to ignore someone’s bad behaviour never really works. That’s why it’s so much fun to watch Yellowstone, for example, with its temperamental characters wasting no time in breaking a bottle on someone’s head or “taking them to the station” – those who know, know. That’s why it’s so much fun to watch Benedikt Erlingsson’s The Danish Woman [+see also:
interview: Benedikt Erlingsson, Ólafur…
series profile], shown at Series Mania.

We’re not saying these kinds of reactions are healthy, but there’s something so relatable here, even though the story is a bit bonkers. In the series, a woman retires from the Danish Secret Service and moves to Iceland, and she just can’t shake off her old ways. Ditte Jensen (Trine “the Nordic Streep” Dyrholm) wants to live a quiet life – she really does. She starts planting carrots and "smudging" her flat. But soon, she starts terrorising her neighbours instead, sometimes only because they are fucking annoying.

Ditte is a lot. She insists that everyone should speak perfect Danish – “You were once Danish,” she tells Icelanders, and that’s not how you make friends. She’s self-righteous and violent. A beloved pet meets an untimely death at her hands, only for this European “Karen” to mutter: “And you thought you were going to shit in my garden.” She isn’t always right. And yet sometimes she is.

It's a fun twist: for every aggressive attack on an extremely noisy neighbour who refuses to turn down the music – again, relatable – she helps. An overwhelmed single mum, whose child has turned into a terrifying teenager; a teenage girl, whose ex refuses to delete compromising photos of her in the nude… Ditte’s methods to right all the wrongs aren’t kosher; they are condemnable. But every once in a while, you find yourself thinking: “Yes, but wouldn’t it be nice?” To humiliate a bully, or to teach someone rude a lesson? It’s a moral conundrum, but no worries – regardless of your personal dilemmas, Ditte already has it covered.

This angel of justice in a bucket hat has nothing but time and is unable to just let things go. “You fart in the face of your child,” she says to a man who was just washing his car – with nasty chemicals. She’s a riot, surrounded by equally odd companions, and even by Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir from Erlingsson’s Woman at War [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Benedikt Erlingsson
interview: Benedikt Erlingsson
film profile], who in that film also used rather unusual methods to make her point. He clearly likes a complicated warrior. Now, Geirharðsdóttir is a clueless alcoholic declaring to a refugee from Libya who escaped the war: “I worked in theatre before. There was also so much conflict.”

The weirdness – and the sense of anarchy that makes this show feel so fresh – also continues during the opening and closing credits, with Dyrholm dancing and singing, proving that her musical past that almost led her to Eurovision wasn’t a fluke. Here’s hoping Ditte will be allowed to dance on much longer, all the way into the next season – first taking on an unsuspecting Reykjavík, and then the rest of this irritating world. They have it coming.

Created and directed by Benedikt Erlingsson, The Danish Woman was written by Erlingsson and Ólafur Egill Egilsson. It was produced by Slot Machine, Gullslottid and Zik Zak filmworks, and it is sold by The Party Film Sales.