The Killing Trivia | 40 facts about the series

The Killing is an American crime drama television series that premiered on April 3, 2011, on AMC, based on the Danish television series Forbrydelsen.

Let’s find out more about the series!

1. The series has gained notoriety for being canceled on two occasions only for the show to be revived.
2. The show was initially canceled by AMC in 2012 after its second season but was renewed later in the year due to a strong pitch from creator Veena Sud. After its third season in 2013 the series was canceled yet again by AMC and was nonetheless later revived by Netflix who ordered a fourth and final season.
3. Joel Kinnaman was ecstatic to hear that he could drop the F-bomb during the final season because of Netflix purchasing the show.
4. Sofie Gråbøl who plays Sarah Lund in the original Danish series appears in 1 episode as DA Christina Neilson.
5. Veena Sud has confirmed in an interview that the show depicts the different geographical locations of Seattle.
6. Seasons 1 and 2 depict the working class neighborhoods, while Season 3 depicts the streets and the fourth season depicting the wealthy part of Seattle.
7. Bex Taylor-Klaus revealed on an interview that during the shooting of the third season they talked to a lot of the writers, crew members and actors to gather information about who the killer might be, to the point of actually figuring it out before the big reveal came on the show.
8. Linden wears a brown patterned sweater throughout the show, a nod to the famous sweaters her counterpart wore on Forbrydelsen (2007)/
9. AMC canceled the series after the second season.
10. A few months later, Fox Television Studios reached a deal with Netflix to co-produce the series with AMC and revive the series for a third season.
11. Much of the incidental music in Season 1 and 2 is the same as Forbrydelsen (2007)’s first two seasons. They were both scored by Frans Bak.
12. Mireille Enos did not watch the Danish original, Forbrydelsen (2007), before filming this series.
13. The Danish title of the original series, Forbrydelsen (2007), actually translates to “The Crime” – not “The Killing” as it was called in the US.
14. There’s a certain piece of music that appears on every episode on the final scene. This music is a newer, a bit different, version of a piece of music from the original Danish Forbrydelsen (2007) series (that was also scored by the same composer, Frans Bak).
15. Unlike the American The Killing (2011), there was a soundtrack release for the Danish series, and on the soundtrack the music is track 10, entitled “Waiting”.
16. In The Jungle (2013), Holder’s girlfriend (Jewel Staite) comments on his tattoo “Serenity” saying that it’s a stripper’s name. She later says to keep the tattoo because, “It’s hot.”
17. Jewel Staite played Kaylee Frye on the show Firefly (2002) and later in the movie Serenity (2005), where she was the engineer on the ship named Serenity.
18. In The Killing (2011) track from Forbrydelsen “Whos Calling” has no vocals while track “Theis and Pernille’s theme” has been added plus a vocal, in addition to the existing one.
19. Kristin Lehman, Joel Kinnaman and Tahmoh Penikett were together also in the futuristic ‘Altered Carbon’ series.The house that Sarah Linden lives in is later used in Imposters (2017) as the house Maddie’s parents live in.
20. Mireille Enos and Joel Kinnamen also starred together in the show Hanna.
21. The first and second season of this remake follow the plot of the original season of Forbrydelsen (2007) closely, including the many different avenues of investigation, such as the stolen politician’s car, the Halloween party, the relationship with her teacher etc. This series eventually deviates and ends up with a different killer and a different motive.
22. Veena Sud confirmed in interviews that she wanted Rosie Larsen’s murder to be a two season mystery.
23. Patty Jenkins directed both Pilot (2011) and What I Know (2012) (the pilot and season 2 finale), hence opening and closing the Rosie Larsen murder mystery.
24. The original Killing is a Danish police procedural drama television series.
25. The original series was created by Søren Sveistrup and produced by DR in co-production with ZDF Enterprises.
26. It premiered on the Danish national television channel DR1 on 7 January 2007.
27. It has since been broadcast in several other countries.
28. The series is set in Copenhagen and revolves around Detective Inspector Sarah Lund (Sofie Gråbøl).
29. Each series follows a murder case day-by-day. Each fifty-minute episode covers twenty-four hours of the investigation.
30. The series is noted for its plot twists, season-long storylines and dark tone, and for giving equal emphasis to the stories of the murdered victim’s family and the effect in political circles alongside the police investigation.
31. It has also been singled out for the photography of its Danish setting, and for the acting ability of its cast.
32. The Killing has proved to be an international success, particularly in the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands, receiving numerous awards and nominations including a BAFTA Award and an International Emmy.
33. It has become something of a cult show. Novelisations of each series have been published by Macmillan.
34. The pilot was ordered by AMC in January 2010 and then was picked up for a full series order in August 2010.
35. The Netflix show was filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia.
36. Some scenes in season two filmed in Coquitlam, British Columbia, at Riverview Hospital.
37. Production began on the pilot episode on December 2, 2010.
38. In contrast to the original Danish series, executive producer Veena Sud explained, “We’re creating our own world. We are using the Danish series as a blueprint, but we are kind of diverging and creating our own world, our world of suspects and, potentially, ultimately who killed Rosie Larsen.”
39. Sud describes the series as “slow-burn storytelling in a sense that every moment that we don’t have to prettify or gloss over or make something necessarily easy to digest, that we’re able to go to all sorts of places that are honest, and dark, and beautiful and tragic, in a way that is how a story should be told.”
40. Reviewers and fans of the first three seasons noted similarities and borrowed elements from David Lynch’s TV series Twin Peaks and the follow-up film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, and compared and contrasted Sud and Lynch’s works.