Stephen McGinty: Danish TV drama? It's a real scream

Look!""No.""You've got to see this!"

It is 9:15 pm, I'm on the living room sofa and I feel the fear begin to rise. Fear, mixed with morbid fascination, what, pray tell, am I missing? So I nervously lower the magazine which has taken on the adult role of the cushion that once protected me from the terrors of the Cybermen, and look at the television. By my layman's reckoning an over-enthusiastic butcher appears to have wedged a tail of sirloin steak between the hairy buttocks of a middle-aged actuary.

"Aghh"

"It's a prolapsed rectum," explains my wife. "Amazing."

Lori loves Embarrassing Bodies, Channel 4's gynaecological and faecal horror show in which individuals too shy to reveal their pus-ridden ailments to a doctor in the privacy of an examination room are gently persuaded to do so in front of a camera for the edification and, I'm quite prepared to concede, education of millions of viewers. (How do they do that? It's a question I ponder along with those cases where an unknown body is identified by their dental records, on the reasonable grounds that if you don't know who they are, how do you know the identity of their dentist?)

Each week is a battle of wills between my petty resistance to being scarred for life by images of open surgery, weeping sores and head lice, and Lori's overwhelming desire to share her fascination with the beautiful yet bloody mechanics of the human body. I frequently lose, so the last image in my head as I turn out the light each Friday night, is rarely a comforting one.

In fairness, there are certain things Lori can't watch, which currently includes that blasted advert for the Scottish SPCA, in which David Tennant pleads for three quid over pitiful images of beaten and tortured dogs, including one mite whose leg appeared to have been hacked off. To stop the inevitable tears, I've had to explain that the dogs are trained performers who have had the benefit of extensive make-up and the use of CGI special effects.

What to watch on television is the perennial problem of coupledom. I want to watch Peter Taylor's Age of Terror. Lori wants to watch Time Team. We compromise on watching something that interests neither of us on the grounds that, instead of one person contentedly enjoying his or her chosen programme, we can now share an hour's quality boredom. This was how we found ourselves watching: Young Fishmonger of the Year on BBC Three, one of the infinite variety of reality TV junk in which contestants vie with each other for a worthless title while being regularly mocked by supercilious judges who insist on applying nonsensical time constraints to every task.Still, it did allow us to hear a priceless line, which now sums up every such show from The Apprentice on down.

"John, your halibut let you down."

Now I can't say it without conjuring an image of John and his partner, The Halibut, standing side by side, holding hand and fin, a la The X-Factor, nervously waiting as the tension and music mounts. When the judges deliver their verdict the halibut's head falls, leaving John in his white wellies and lab coat to leave the stage, kicking the halibut with every step. Other favourite lines we're collected over the years include: "It's a sad day for puppets" and one wife's gentle retort to her husband: "Shut it fat boy, you want shootin'".

Still, for all the hours of shared indifference, occasionally there is a programme that unites us both thus transforming the sofa into a harmonious idyll, where the cushions are gripped with escalating excitement and not to soothe waves of nausea. At the moment that programme is The Killing (BBC Four, tonight, 9pm) which apparently all the chattering classes are switching on after the 10 M&S meal for two has been devoured and the wine bottle licked dry. The drama has enjoyed higher ratings than Mad Men, with 500,000 viewers, around 10 per cent Scots.

Not bad for a Danish programme with subtitles, but as it is 20 hours long you'll soon pick up the language, we're on episode 16 and now know that 'Tak' means 'thank you' and 'Forbrydelsen' (the original title) means 'the crime', which will allow me to visit Copenhagen and wave off any future Danish mugger with the line: "Tak Forbrydelsen'. Except, of course, I now have no desire ever to visit Copenhagen where to judge by the show every attractive Nordic style home appears to also house a sinister blood-stained backroom.

Each of the 20 hour-long episodes is one day in a complex murder investigation of a schoolgirl, seen running through woods in the opening episode after fleeing a horrific rape ordeal but destined to be drowned in the boot of a sunken car by a calculating serial killer. The vast length, allows a degree of characterisation and empathy rarely seen on television, so the grief of the victim's parents drives them to extreme behaviour, he to an act of violence and she to a catatonic pseudo-affair, all the while the plot continues to loop and tighten over a wide array of characters. For example, local government politics is explored as first an immigrant and then a candidate for mayor becomes a suspect.When first shown in Denmark in 2007, it was a smash hit, a European Twin Peaks in which the nation was wrapped up, not in 'who killed Laura Palmer?', but who killed Nanna Birk Larsen? As the cast were shown each script on the day before filming began, only the creator, Soren Sveistrup knew the answer.

The show's appeal is strongly connected to the character of the lead detective, Sarah Lund (played by Sofie Grabol), a single mother who at the beginning is working her final day before moving to Sweden with her boyfriend. Yet all the cliches of the woman in a man's world have been eschewed, she's reserved to the point of autism, focused, almost indifferent to her family and single-minded in her pursuit of the killer. She's Clint Eastwood in a knitted sweater. In fact the black and white knitwear has become a sidekick from which she is reluctant to be parted, she's worn it through sodden fields, examining a corpse and was even stabbed while wearing it but was still all set to don it to a party before a major break in the case forced her to cancel. The sweater has become a part of the sofa conversation.

"She's still wearing it, and we're at day eight, its not hygienic."

"Maybe it's her lucky 'killer-catching' sweater."

Then we found out that it was a designer number, one favoured by Helena Christiansen and which cost €280, and we calculated that if you paid that much on a cop's salary you would want to get your money's worth. The manufacturer certainly have as it went on to become a best-seller. So if you're struggling to find a programme to unite the sexes, and if you haven't already seen The Killing, you can catch up on BBC iPlayer, trust me, its worth it. You'll tak me.