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"So, it&amp;#039;s almost a week since The Killing - or Forbrydelsen as we&amp;#039;ve taken to calling it - came to a close on BBC Four. Who would have thought that a slow-burning, subtitled, Danish crime series would have been such a cult hit? It picked up higher ratings than Mad Men, fashion columns have drooled over Sarah Lund&amp;#039;s marvellous collection of jumpers, and people have started practising their conversational Danish (all I&amp;#039;ve learnt is how to say &amp;#039;thank you&amp;#039;, but it&amp;#039;s a start). Now it&amp;#039;s all over, there&amp;#039;s time to take a breath and think about why exactly it captured an audience and what on earth we should do now that it&amp;#039;s off the air! We could talk about it for hours, so we&amp;#039;ve only picked up on a few points, but feel free to get involved in the comments below. If you&amp;#039;re still catching up do not read on - spoilers lie ahead... A rather good story As Charlie Brooker told us when we chatted to him recently, The Killing is basically &amp;quot;well made pop TV&amp;quot;. But boy, is it well made. Normally crime dramas present us with a dead body, introduce a maverick cop, and have it all wrapped up in time for a cup of tea. Not The Killing. Spreading one murder case out over 20 hours of television meant that you never quite knew where you were. Just when you thought you&amp;#039;d figured it all out, something happened and forced you to think about everything all over again. Not only that, but with the shenanigans at City Hall we also got political intrigue, corruption, and ruthless ambition. And this wasn&amp;#039;t just a standard murder story - it was also a character study in grief. You never normally see the victims&amp;#039; families in crime dramas, except for the odd anguished scream. Pernille and Theis&amp;#039;s quiet devastation was, well, devastating.  Which brings us to... the characters Sofie Gr\u00E5b\u00F8l has said that she doesn&amp;#039;t think of Sarah Lund as a stereotype, and she&amp;#039;s right. Lund isn&amp;#039;t really a maverick - although in the end she&amp;#039;s forced to become a &amp;#039;cop who doesn&amp;#039;t play by the rules&amp;#039;, it never seems forced or clich\u00E9d. Similarly, Meyer and Lund&amp;#039;s relationship could be that old crime drama standard - two cops stuck together who don&amp;#039;t get along - but for some reason it just worked. It&amp;#039;s probably partly because the characters always seem to have more than one side. Meyer is an insufferable, politically incorrect buffoon at the beginning, but he slowly starts to become likeable. When he first turned up, I never thought that I&amp;#039;d be upset if something happened to him, but when the time came, it stung. Every so often, tiny little scenes pop up to make you feel differently about the characters. When Lund comes across Meyer sitting with his wife and family at the station, you see a completely new side to him - just at the point when you need to care. The thing is, all of the characters in this show are complex. No-one is wholly good or evil. It&amp;#039;s refreshing to see a murder case in which the victim&amp;#039;s father is actually not a particularly nice guy - he&amp;#039;s a violent and quick-tempered vigilante. That doesn&amp;#039;t mean your heart doesn&amp;#039;t break when he goes to the petrol station and just can&amp;#039;t hold in the tears anymore. Ann Eleonora J\u00F8rgensen as Pernille, on the other hand, somehow manages to convey a huge amount of emotion just by sitting quietly. That means that her occasional flashes of anger mean so much more, and her ill-advised attempt to have a one-night stand is just awful. Even Nanna herself becomes a character - whereas normally the victims are just seen as dead bodies and smiling photographs, we get to see a touching video she filmed before her tragic death.  And then we come to the politicians. Troels starts off as the confident, idealistic, perfect candidate for mayor. His breakdown when we hear that he has been accused of Nanna&amp;#039;s murder, and his desperation to find someone else to accuse in his place, is actually difficult to watch - even more so when we discover that he&amp;#039;s just tried to kill himself. Not only that, but he surrounds himself with the worst possible people. Rie is a manipulative, crafty, ruthless political super-brain, but you still feel sorry for her when you find out that she has been blamed for Morten&amp;#039;s misdeeds. Speaking of which, all through the show Morten is an apparently harmless and possibly bumbling assistant. His admission that he covered up the crime scene at the flat is chilling because of his sudden, but believable, switch into a cold, calculated political operative. And Troels, despite all his promises, ends up just as corrupt as the lot of them. The conclusion - and you really must skip this section if you haven&amp;#039;t watched the final episodes yet! Wow. To be honest, there was a little bit of disappointment that Vagn ended up being the killer - it seemed obvious from the beginning (or as obvious as anything could be in this show). But even then, Forbrydelsen found a way to unsettle you. It all started with the stunning scene in the basement. Lund turning round and seeing Vagn in that sweater - the &amp;#039;Sara 84&amp;#039; moment - must surely have made hands fly to mouths in shock all over the country. And then that wonderful, wonderful scene in the woods; how fitting that a show that started with murder in the forest should end that way. The police and Pernille arriving with torches perfectly mirrored the detectives searching for Nanna&amp;#039;s body 20 days ago. You ended up screaming at the television, begging Theis not to shoot the man in front of him - but then he did. And so Pernille has not just lost a daughter, but a husband too - and is now left looking after her two sons and the puppy given to them by the man who tore her family apart. Even the final shot of Lund walking out of the police station was perfect.  Help! I&amp;#039;m having withdrawal symptoms... You&amp;#039;re not the only one. The conclusion of Forbrydelsen was amazing, but now that we&amp;#039;ve been left without our weekly fix, how should we fill the hole in our lives? Well, the BBC has already picked up the second series of the show, which should be airing later in the year. BBC Four actually included it in its recent spring/summer announcement, so we might not have to wait as long as we thought! If you still can&amp;#039;t wait that long, the BBC is handily filling in the Saturday night gap with the third series of Spiral, which starts tomorrow at 9pm on BBC Four. It&amp;#039;s French, so you can get your foreign fix. It&amp;#039;s also gory, thrilling, tense and gripping. Does that sound like your cup of tea? If you want to catch up, the first two series are available on DVD now. Speaking of DVDs, if nothing but Forbrydelsen will do, you can grab the box set from Monday. Oh, and the American remake of Forbrydelsen starts in the US on AMC on Sunday. We&amp;#039;ve eyed up the trailer and it seems like it&amp;#039;s almost exactly like the Danish original. But maybe we shouldn&amp;#039;t be too hasty - the show&amp;#039;s executive producer Veena Sud told reporters a while back that Forbrydelsen will be a &amp;quot;blueprint&amp;quot; and added: &amp;quot;We are kind of diverging and creating our own world, our world of suspects and, potentially, ultimately who killed Rosie Larsen.&amp;quot; In other words, we might be in for a whole new Killing experience! The only problem is that there&amp;#039;s no UK air date for the show yet. Time to book some plane tickets... Watch the extended trailer for AMC&amp;#039;s remake of The Killing below!  The Danish version of The Killing is out on DVD on Monday. Did you enjoy The Killing? How will you deal with your withdrawal symptoms? Sound off below! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/news/a311516/why-tube-talk-loved-the-killing/>