Cowboy Afloat

I wanted to like Copenhagen Cowboy more than I did. In this golden age of television, in which series are said to be becoming more like cinema, generally that means dialogue and/or action. They're like a kind of film, very rarely do they show the sensuality film is capable of. Copenhagen Cowboy is a very sensual show. Unfortunately, it also feels like a show where the writers ran out of ideas early on,

After Miu's (Angela Bundalovic) experiences at the brothel in the first couple episodes, she ends up at a Chinese restaurant where she helps the proprietor, Mother Hulda (Li li Zhang). She uses her more overt supernatural powers, first to heal an infant, and then to heal the gang boss, Chiang (Jason Hendil-Forssell), who's keeping Mother Hulda's daughter prisoner.

She's also still trying to hunt down the vampire, Nicklas (Andreas Lykke Jørgensen). At one point, Miu shows herself to be a martial arts expert, easily able to dispatch anyone who tries to take her down. This leads to an effective showdown with Nicklas at a slaughterhouse.

We also learn she's able to kill practically just by looking at someone. Indeed, in one scene she seems to kill a guy with a needle. Which all begs the question, why did she let the people at the brothel push her around? It seems like Nicolas Winding Refn and his writers initially planned for her to be a character of more passive abilities but lost enthusiasm for it. So they decided to make her a more action oriented protagonist, more typical of Winding Refn's work.

She gets involved with a gang war that never quite manages to build up real tension. The vagueness about the extent of Miu's powers is a big part of the problem. But the visuals continue to be stunning. Zlatko Burić, the star of Winding Refn's famous Pusher series, joins the show as a major character halfway through and he gives a great performance. There are a lot of good parts here, I only wish there'd been a more solid idea behind everything.

Copenhagen Cowboy is available on Netflix.

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.