Burden of justice It is already a hit. More than a million Swedes – a tenth of the total population – watched the first episode of the legal drama, about a group of defense lawyers facing ethical challenges at the upscale Stockholm firm Mattson & Moradi, on Swedish public broadcaster SVT.
The series also dazzled the audience at the international TV festival “Series Mania”, where it was shown this week as part of the international Panorama program.
For a global audience that has come to associate TV North with an endless parade of procedurals, Burden of justice The script flips and the judicial system turns itself into a crime scene. There is no body on the field. No icy detective wearing a cozy knit sweater. The attorneys at Mattson & Moradi wear Gordon Gekko power suits. They make their money by looking for legal loopholes to attract their wealthy clients.
Managing partner Callie (Björn Bengtsson) can deliver a convincing line about every citizen’s right to defense, but most of his team has long ago abandoned the moral high ground for legal expediency — and the lure of a four-figure billable hour. New partner Sasha (Arvin Kananian) finds a way, despite Sweden’s strict consent laws, to let a wealthy rapist off the hook. Ambitious Oscar (Kate Walker Johansson), hoping to land a major drug dealer’s client, agrees to frame a juvenile with murder.
Burden of justice It was written by Jens Lapidus, a criminal defense lawyer turned writer and showrunner, best known for his detective novels Snap Cash (Easy money), was adapted as a film trilogy starring Joel Kinnaman and later remade by Lapidus into a two-season Netflix series. Such as this series and the crime drama Lapidus 2020 Top dogAmong the Serbian mafia in Sweden, Burden of justice He lives in a gray world of moral compromise.
“The average person thinks the justice system is about seeking the truth, right? With lawyers and judges acting as the hero, seeking justice,” says Frans Wiklund, the series’ head writer. “But if you look deeper, for a defense lawyer it’s about saving your client, finding the cracks in the system.”
Despite his dramatic flourishes, Burden of justice It is based on deep research.
“We spent a lot a lot “I spent time talking with lawyers, prosecutors, judges, people who committed crimes, people who were victims of crimes,” says series director and co-writer Lisa Lennertorp.
The team had lawyers on set to advise the actors and edit dialogue, especially in the courtroom scenes.
“There was one scene, where I had a three-page monologue, which was a huge scene that I worked a lot on,” says Tyrell Wishman, who plays junior assistant Tilda. “During filming, the lawyer said, ‘No, change this, move this over there, change it around,’ and it got me going. All of this to make it as realistic as possible.”
Realism and roughness Burden of justicesets it apart from most Swedish TV shows, which are often polished and tasteful to a fault. Politically incorrect and shocking, with plenty of dark humor underlining the drama, the show is like the most sophisticated television – think Borgen or Rita – Made by Denmark, Sweden’s most impudent neighbour.
“The storytelling and the tone, with its rawness and humor, definitely has a Danish side to it,” says Arvin Kananian. “It’s a matter of taste, and it’s a strange thing to say when you’re part of it, but to me this is the best series to come out of our region since I started watching television.”
Swedish fans seem to agree. With two episodes of the first season still to air, SVT has given the green light to the second season. A third season is in development. DR Sales, Danish outfit sold Borgen and Rita All over the world, he deals with international rights. Their bet is that a global market saturated with Nordic Noir will be hungry for a less traditional Scandinavian drama, one that replaces murder mysteries with a cooler premise: moral corruption inside the courtroom.
