New threads
Danish drama Uniformen (The Uniform) explores the ethical and moral dilemmas facing police officers from the perspective of the students and staff at Copenhagen’s police academy. Writers Oscar Giese and Anders August join director Jonas Alexander Arnby to reveal more.
When the newest recruits enrolled at the Danish police academy are questioned about how they would treat a woman caught using her mobile phone behind the wheel of her van, it highlights the moral and ethical questions at the heart of six-part series Uniformen (The Uniform).
As the characters soon learn, whether they take action or let her off with a warning is up to the individual officer. It’s an example of the numerous different decisions they will have to make each day – and reveals how they must apply both the rules of law and their best judgement to the unpredictable real-world incidents they will confront on the streets of Copenhagen.
“There’s this fascination with theory and reality, when you’re taught one thing and then you have to live it in the real world and see how far the theory can take you when your personal morals take over in very difficult situations,” series writer Oscar Giese tells DQ. “We were fascinated about that, and also the coming-of-age story about becoming a cop, and all the things you need to learn as a human being to be able to do that job well. It has a lot of drama.”
“It is such a huge responsibility for mostly very young people coming into the police academy, and we felt this was a view on being a police officer that we hadn’t really seen,” says fellow writer Anders August. As the students meet the “older generation” – the veteran officers and academy staff and tutors – the series also explores questions relating to their positions, both personally and professionally.
“Where are they in their life? Have they lost a bit of faith in the role of the police? Do they still believe in the good they’re doing?” August asks. “There’s this dynamic between young and old, at a very vulnerable time for these police officers. That’s why we feel our show is more than a classic blue-lights, on-the-street procedural show. We wanted to investigate the psychology of trying to become this police officer.”
With a fresh student intake finding their feet inside the academy – which boasts an intimidating, glass-walled training room known as the Aquarium – the series opens as questions are raised about the use of force and standards of police training when a student officer shoots and injures an aggressive young man during a violent arrest.
Pressure subsequently grows on the school’s new principal, Sanne Hammerby, as the Independent Police Complaints Authority launches an investigation into the incident, which also examines and challenges the school’s procedures and curricula. As the truth becomes increasingly unclear, both students and staff are confronted with the difficult choices and heavy responsibility that come with wearing the uniform.
Produced by Miso Film for Denmark’s DR and distributed by Fremantle, The Uniform’s ensemble cast is led by Lene Maria Christensen (Sanne), Soheil Bavi (Youssef Elamin), Clara Rosager (Freja Vermelin), Gustav Giese (Tobias Skov), Jakob Cedergren (Martin Hammersby), Marco Ilsø (Daniel Kristensen), Mathilde Arcel (Liv) and Clint Ruben (Peter). Simon Sears is Elliot Kallehav, the prosecutor at the complaints authority.
The idea behind The Uniform emerged a couple of years ago when Giese was in his final semester of study at the National Film School of Denmark. He pitched it to DR and the broadcaster immediately loved the idea, but wanted to pair him with a more experienced writing partner. At the same time, he had been working with August (A Fortunate Man, Follow the Money) on another project, and when he proposed the idea of collaborating on The Uniform, August jumped on board.
“Ever since then, we just did it together, and the show has changed a lot since then,” Giese notes. “Now it’s just totally an equal partner thing. But it was a big thing for me and I’ve learned a lot working with this guy.”
August knew Giese (Darkness: Those Who Kill) best as an actor and was drawn to the world in which The Uniform is set, believing it to be a “fresh take” on the crime genre.
“I really like the nerdiness of it rather than the blue lights thing, because we’ve seen so many cop shows with investigators and murders,” he says. “We’ve also seen a lot of on-the-street rookie shows. But I felt like this just had enough of its own particularity that it’s really a coming-of-age show set in this police world.”
During months of research, Giese and August read the same textbooks used by genuine trainee officers, as well as talking to the students themselves. They also received support from Denmark’s real police training academy as they sought to reflect the reality of police officers on screen.
“They didn’t get to read the scripts, they didn’t get to influence content, but we really wanted this show to be grounded and to reflect the reality of the police,” August says of the partnership with the academy. “We worked very closely with them. Oscar started the project a little bit before me, so he has had even more meetings with students.”
“They are very proud of their school, so they wanted to just have an open door and let us in,” Giese says. “Of course, the police are not interested in a lot of bad stories about them, but they wanted it to be truthful and they wanted us to meet the students and the teachers. It’s been very rewarding for our story to be able to interview the students out there.”
Not having known anyone who applied for the police academy when he was younger, Giese says: “For me, it’s also a human study. Who are you and what brought you to do this in life instead of something else? It was really fascinating to be able to come out there and just meet everyone in person, because that’s also what the show is about, the human being underneath the uniform.”
In the writers room, each script was passed back and forth between Giese and August to create a “very even partnership,” which grew to a trio when director Jonas Alexander Arnby (Veronika, Darkness: Those Who Kill) joined the project.
Arnby was similarly struck by the “unusual” perspective on policing dramatised in The Uniform and how the “suspenseful” drama affects the show’s gallery of characters. “The complexity of this is a little bit rare. I haven’t seen that so much, so that was what I found interesting,” he says.
Coming straight from the editing room of another series, SVT’s Tuppence Middleton-led horror Blood Cruise, Arnby was reunited with his Helikopterrånet (The Helicopter Heist) DOP Niels Thastum and set up a visual style for the series that utilises a blend of fixed and handheld shots – the latter most noticeably when characters are out on patrol.
Directing all six episodes, he led the cast and crew through a shoot that was based at an old council building that could be adapted to provide all the interior sets, including the Aquarium, which he calls the “eye” of the building, signifying the exposure officers will face when out on the street.
“You have to be aware that your behaviour has a meaning or has an effect, that society is watching you,” he says. “That mentality, or that idea, drifts through the whole story.”
That the show confronts not only professional incidents but also personal drama also gave Arnby the opportunity to build a strong rapport with his cast, as he likes to spend lots of time in prep before shooting, rather than embracing an element of actor improvisation once the cameras are rolling.
“I’m not an improvisation kind of guy,” he says. “I spend a lot of time on rehearsals. I believe very much in a lot of conversation, almost spending too much time talking before each scene, going through it with the actors. The bunch of actors we had is the best of the best in Denmark, so the conversation we had about how the characters should be approached, and what I thought was interesting in getting out of each scene, was such a good conversation that we always spent a lot of time on the prepping.
“It can be a little bit frustrating for the team,” he continues, “because there’s a lot of waiting time, but it gives a very clear indication on where we’re going. It’s not like we’re shooting ourselves to get warm and then maybe there’s a take down the line that we’re really pleased with. As soon as we turn the camera on and you do an actual take, everything can be used.”
With the Aquarium looming in the background of numerous shots, special attention had to be paid to the supporting actors, with dozens of people appearing through its circular glass walls and beyond.
“There was a choreography to all the school shots. One of the main ambitions of bringing to life a police school was that there’s always things going on,” Arnby says. “There’s always people, fighting, running, training, talking, so we wanted to bring that through. We didn’t want to have an empty school. We wanted to have a school that was breathing and alive and that always has something going on in the background.”
Despite numerous challenges, making The Uniform was “one of the most fun gigs I’ve had in a very long time,” the director adds. “There was a common understanding that we wanted to show characters that were made of flesh and blood. We wanted to understand their journey. We wanted to understand their ambitions and motivations and decisions and regrets, and we wanted to understand their feelings. That was a great ambition, but it was also just a great way of working. I enjoyed it very much.”
The writers were heavily involved in production during the first few weeks of shooting, owing to the number of pink pages – script rewrites – that were needed. “We were writing while we were shooting, and we were working with the actors and with Jonas, who came in quite late as a director, so trying to get him into everything,” Giese says.
“We were following it quite closely,” notes August, “especially watching dailies. But with the budgets that we’re making TV for here [in Denmark], once you get going, you need to get going. You just have to go for it. It’s been great working with Jonas. We’ve been so happy to have one director on all episodes. It’s been a real joy to work with the actors and with him, and it’s been a very rewarding process for everybody.”
The writers now hope the show, which debuts on DRTV on February 20 before its linear launch on DR1 on February 22, sparks a conversation across Denmark, regardless of how viewers feel about the police.
“My goal is not for people to wave and smile at every police officer they see in the street, but hopefully they can understand the job a little better,” Giese says.
“Hopefully people will have a debate,” adds August. “We want people to discuss and to have a deeper understanding of the very high standards we have to set for police officers, because we need to have very high standards. But we also hope for a better understanding of how challenging it is for young people to live up to these standards. That would make us happy.”
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tagged in: Anders August, DR, Jonas Alexander Arnby, Oscar Giese, The Uniform, Uniformen