Return to Denmark

There's a new Nicolas Winding Refn series on Netflix no-one seems to be watching called Copenhagen Cowboy. Its 79% audience score is based on just 28 reviews. 17 critics have given it 71%, which the site does not consider enough to certify it fresh or rotten. I watched the first two of the six episodes and thought they were lovely, the first episode being a bit stronger than the second.

A few of the negative reviews call the show "self-congratulatory", which I don't understand at all, unless Winding Refn once went to war against a Danish brothel.

The story follows Miu (Angela Bundalovic), a quiet, skinny girl who's hired by the madam of a brothel in the first episode because she has the power to bestow good luck with her presence. Or so it's said. Refn and his screenwriter, Sara Isabella Jonsson, keep the actual extent of Miu's powers ambiguous. Since, as usual, Refn likes long, intense takes punctuated by strange sounds or movement, you're invited to ponder how much of what's occurring is due to Miu's manipulations. Or if Miu is just an innocent victim caught in a progressively more dangerous whirlpool.

One critic, Charles Bramesco of The Guardian, accuses Winding Refn of having, "active disdain for the rhythms of serial television." Could it be actually that Winding Refn is just working with a different rhythm to typical serial television? It's not like it's the first project he's made with a rhythm like this.

Copenhagen Cowboy is the second streaming series Winding Refn has made, the previous being Too Old to Die Young for Amazon Prime. I was excited to see that series but then one day I found out it'd been out for a year and I'd never heard about it. Amazon Prime didn't promote it at all and kind of seemed to bury it. Which maybe explains why Winding Refn's working for Netflix now. It seems like he used to be such a critical darling, he must have really pissed some people off in the industry somehow. Maybe he's just of the wrong persuasion in one damning way or another.

Anyway, Copenhagen Cowboy is really pretty and eerie. I'm digging it so far.