If you’re scrolling through a streaming service and see a thumbnail for a show about wind turbines and corporate accounting, you probably keep scrolling. Most people do. Honestly, on paper, Follow the Money—originally titled Bedrag in Denmark—sounds like a nap in televised form.
But you’d be making a massive mistake.
This isn't just another dry procedural where guys in suits stare at spreadsheets for fifty minutes. It’s a jagged, high-stakes thriller that treats white-collar crime like a blood sport. While most "Nordic Noir" series focus on a lonely detective chasing a serial killer through a foggy forest, this show realizes that the real monsters aren't hiding in the woods. They’re sitting in corner offices on the 40th floor, drinking expensive scotch and destroying the global economy for a 2% bump in their quarterly bonus.
Why Follow the Money Still Matters in the Age of True Crime
We’ve all seen the classic tropes. The gritty cop with a broken marriage. The moody lighting. The grey, desaturated sky. Follow the Money has all of that, but it shifts the focus to something much more terrifying: the banality of greed.
The first season centers on Energreen, a renewable energy giant that seems like the "good guys." They’re saving the planet, right? Except a body washes up near one of their wind farms, and suddenly, the "green" in green energy starts looking a lot more like the color of cold, hard cash.
The Characters You’ll Love (and Hate)
The show succeeds because it doesn’t just follow the cops. It splits the narrative into three distinct, messy worlds that eventually collide.
- Mads (Thomas Bo Larsen): He’s the detective you’ve seen before, but with a twist. He’s grumpy and stubborn, sure, but he’s driven by a genuine sense of unfairness. He's struggling with a wife who has multiple sclerosis and a system that seems designed to let the big fish swim away.
- Claudia (Natalie Madueño): She is arguably the most interesting character. A young, ambitious lawyer who gets promoted into the inner circle of Energreen. You watch her soul slowly erode as she realizes she’s not just a lawyer; she’s a professional fixer for a criminal enterprise.
- Nicky (Esben Smed): A car mechanic who stumbles into a bag of money. It’s the classic "easy out" that turns into a permanent trap. By the time we hit the third season, Nicky’s transformation is one of the most brutal and fascinating character arcs in modern television.
The Season 3 Pivot: A Masterclass in TV Evolution
Most shows start to rot by their third year. They get repetitive. They lose the plot. Follow the Money did something incredibly brave: it basically blew itself up and started over.
If the first two seasons were about boardrooms and banks, Season 3 (released in 2019) is about the street. It’s a "soft reboot" that focuses on the drug trade and money laundering. It’s faster, meaner, and arguably the best season of the bunch.
Nicky is back, but he’s not a mechanic anymore. He’s a high-level smuggler living in Spain, trying to get his son back. Alf (Thomas Hwan), the police officer from the previous seasons, is now a shell of a man suffering from PTSD. He’s obsessed with catching the people moving the money because he knows that if you stop the cash, the drugs stop flowing.
Is It Based on a True Story?
People ask this a lot because the financial crimes feel so... real. While the specific company, Energreen, is fictional, the writer Jeppe Gjervig Gram (who also co-wrote Borgen) based the show on the very real fallout of the 2008 financial crisis.
He spent months researching how banks actually move money and how easy it is for a corporation to look "sustainable" while being fundamentally hollow. It’s "truth-adjacent" fiction. It feels real because the people who wrote it understand that most criminals don't wear masks; they wear Rolexes.
What Most People Get Wrong About the Show
There’s a common misconception that you need a degree in finance to enjoy this. You don't.
Basically, the show explains the "boring" stuff through the lens of human consequence. You don’t need to know how "shorting" a stock works to understand the terror of a whistleblower realizing they’ve been followed home. You don't need to be an accountant to feel the tension when a bank employee (like Anna in Season 3) decides to start "cleaning" money just to feel alive again.
Scandi-Noir or Something New?
The term "Nordic Noir" is thrown around a lot. Usually, it means a murder mystery with a lot of sweaters. Follow the Money fits the aesthetic, but the pacing is different. It’s more The Wire than The Killing. It’s interested in the systems that allow crime to happen.
Why do we let these companies get away with it? Why is it easier to arrest a kid selling hash on a corner in Nørrebro than a CEO who just embezzled millions? The show doesn't give you easy answers, which is exactly why it’s so addictive.
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How to Watch Follow the Money Today
If you’re ready to dive in, here’s a quick roadmap to make the most of it:
- Watch it in Danish: Seriously. Subtitles over dubbing, every single time. The performances by Thomas Bo Larsen and Esben Smed are too good to lose to a flat voiceover.
- Commit to Season 1: The first few episodes are a bit of a slow burn as they set up the financial jargon. Stick with it. Once the "accidents" start happening, the pace never lets up.
- Pay Attention to the Side Characters: In Season 2, keep an eye on the "Swede." He’s one of the most chilling "cleaners" in TV history. He doesn't say much, but he doesn't have to.
- Expect a Vibe Shift: When you hit Season 3, don't be alarmed that it feels like a different show. It’s supposed to. It’s a deeper, darker exploration of the same themes but from the bottom up instead of the top down.
Honestly, the world of Follow the Money is bleak. It’s a show where the "good guys" often lose, and the "bad guys" are just the people with the best lawyers. But in an era of flashy, shallow thrillers, there’s something incredibly refreshing about a series that respects your intelligence enough to show you exactly how the world is being sold, one wind turbine at a time.
If you want to understand the modern world, you don't look at the politics. You follow the money.
Actionable Next Steps
- Check availability: Look for Follow the Money (or Bedrag) on platforms like BBC iPlayer, Amazon Prime, or Topic, depending on your region.
- Start with Episode 1: Don't skip ahead to the "action" seasons. The payoff for characters like Nicky and Alf in Season 3 only works if you’ve seen their descent in the first twenty episodes.
- Research the 2008 Danish Banking Crisis: If you want to see the real-world inspiration, look into the collapse of Roskilde Bank. It provides a fascinating (and terrifying) context for the events of Season 2.