Norskov and the Logic of Place: The Soft Effect of Local Danish TV-drama Production

In this article, we analyse locality and locations in recent Danish TV crime drama with the series Norskov as a representative case. The series’ mode of production is rooted in the Danish broadcaster TV 2’s regional obligations and it illustrates a broader tendency in local TV drama production. The article introduces the concepts intertextual consciousness, stories from below and cartographic branding, and refers to the notion of re-imagined communities as a local administrative result of drama production and broadcast. The findings of the article are based on production and location analyses with primary focus on the series’ preproduction stage as well as empirical data material such as interviews, documents from the production process and material from the municipality of Frederikshavn (the location of Norskov), manuscript versions, and textual and visual material from the cinematographer and the location manager. Finally, the article combines provinciality and the notion of re-imagined communities in order to evaluate the effect of local drama production.