Graeme Virtue 

Lars von Trier returns to TV: what can we expect?

Graeme Virtue: The director of Nymphomaniac has announced a new TV series, The House that Jack Built, produced by the Danish broadcaster behind The Killing and The Bridge. But what will it be like?
  
  

Lars von Trier
Lars von Trier: returning to TV with a Danish drama series in English. Photograph: Mathis Wienand/Getty Images Photograph: Mathis Wienand/Getty Images

Good news for fans of the phrase “enfant terrible” – on Monday, Lars von Trier, the puckish provocateur of European arthouse cinema, broke his self-imposed media silence by Skype-ing the Venice film festival. Nominally it was to promote an extended cut of his sex diptych Nymphomaniac, but Louise Vesth, Von Trier’s producer since Melancholia, dropped a juicier exclusive by confirming the writer/director’s next project: an English-language TV series for Danish broadcaster DR (The Bridge/The Killing), with the working title The House that Jack Built. Had Vesth simply pulled the trigger, or jumped the gun? Von Trier hasn’t even finished writing the script and the earliest filming date would be 2016, but here’s what we might expect.

He has impressive TV credentials

Before co-founding the Dogme 95 movement, Von Trier made his bones in TV – quite literally, with the unsettling hospital drama The Kingdom, applying startling handheld filming to stylised, often supernatural subject matter. With its atmospheric production design and leaps of nightmare logic, The Kingdom (not to be confused with Stephen Fry’s Norfolk-set legal drama) looks like a precursor to American Horror Story – perhaps AHS creator Ryan Murphy saw the Danish-language original, or the short-lived English-language remake overseen by US terrifier-in-chief Stephen King. Before focusing on movies, Von Trier also experimented with other TV formats, including turning the traditional chatshow into a gruelling endurance test. Guests who appeared on the Von Trier-conceived Marathon in 1996 were interviewed for 24 hours (though the final product was edited for transmission).

He wants a ‘huge cast’

Whatever house Jack ends up building, it might require a lot of guest rooms, since Von Trier is apparently keen to stuff his mini-series with as many faces as possible. (“He wants a huge cast,” confirmed Vesht.) Despite Von Trier’s abrasive reputation, for every actor who swears off working with him ever again – like poor Björk – there are plenty who have stuck with him, including his lucky charm Stellan Skarsgård. There’s the slim chance that after working together on Melancholia, Von Trier might be considering Kiefer Sutherland for the lead role, which would bring a meta-textual sizzle to The House that Jack Built. Other intriguing actors he could find in his Rolodex: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Jamie Bell, Christian Slater … although not, sadly, the late Lauren Bacall, who had collaborated with von Trier twice. He could also tap the local Scandi TV talent pool, most of whom speak excellent English, though hiring too many at once might create a damaging knock-on effect for other homegrown dramas.

He has the freedom of DR’s One Vision

When film directors are lured to TV, they tend to seek out cable or the streaming equivalent: think David Fincher stacking the House of Cards deck for Netflix, or Steven Soderbergh’s spurting sawbones drama The Knick for Cinemax. The House that Jack Built is being produced by DR, the venerable Danish public broadcaster that has nurtured international hits like The Killing and Borgen. DR is broadly similar to the BBC, in that it has a public service remit and is paid for by a licence fee. You might think that would impede some of von Trier’s more provocative impulses but DR has a reputation for hands-off production. They call this approach “One Vision”, which sounds like something hurriedly scrawled on a W1A brainstorming whiteboard, but seems to be the exact opposite of execs interfering, which can only be good for Von Trier. (“One Vision means that you believe in the author and their vision of the story,” DR’s creative director Morten Hesseldahl told the Independent in 2012.)

But is he looking for a new audience?

The House that Jack Built sounds like a nursery rhyme, and while Von Trier most likely intends it as a metaphor for the walls we build around our true selves or somesuch, it’s worth remembering that his last couple of movies – Nymphomaniac, Melancholia – have had very Ronseal-esque titles. Among DR’s family of channels is DR Ramasjang, the equivalent of CBBC. Perhaps the most shocking thing Von Trier could do after almost two decades of pushing cinema’s boundaries and buttons would be to devise a star-studded educational children’s TV show. Could a Von Trier riff on Sesame Street really be the “something you have never seen before and you will definitely never see again” described by Vesht? Even though talking animals are always popular with younger viewers, let’s hope he doesn’t rehire the animal star of Antichrist. Memorable catchphrase or not, that mangy fox is horrible.

 

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