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The Legacy Season 3 is a series I was in, initially, two minds about watching. I loved the first one, but found the second treaded water far too much, as if they’d run out of story and it was left coasting like a car with no breaks and a stalled engine, getting by on the goodwill built up from the first season. At that point, I felt enough of the Grønnegaard story had been told.
IMPORTANT: This review assumes you have seen all of Seasons 1 and 2.
What drew me back? A positive score on IMDB and the fact that this is the final season, so either way, the Grønnegaard family’s tale will be complete.
Season 3 takes place three years on, yet I observed that STILL no-one’s bothered to run a dustpan and brush round Grønnegaard as it’s such a pigsty. Thomas is long since brown bread, and Emil is living at the big house, while Frederik is returning to the fold after having been working in the US for the past two years and ignoring all of his family, given the selfish prat that he is.
The reason for everyone coming together? A pretentious art installation for Fred and Solveig’s daughter, Hannah, which seemingly doesn’t quite go to plan but you don’t really care, since while I felt season 2 was really treading water after a wonderful first season, this final one started with a whimper.
However, things did pick up before too long when a tragedy struck, which was the catalyst for this season’s storyline, since Hannah and her friends have been taking direct action, Greenpeace-style, against mining company Argus, them being dubbed with the label “organic terrorists”, but for what followed, it really was a story that needed tightening up, and which could’ve been compressed into five or six episodes, rather than nine.
In fact, The Legacy‘s been uneven as a while – ten episodes for the first run, then seven, then nine. Most programmes work out a plot that covers an equal number of episodes each season, so why is this one different? I could understand if the plot was packed, but it isn’t.
Beyond that, it’s mostly kitchen sink-style drama: Signe’s still running her half-arsed farm with boyfriend Aksel, yet sadly they can’t have children together. The whole place appears to be TARDIS-sized, given how many waifs and strays litter the place; there’s hassles from an odious chap called Jensen who spent some time on her land; Lone keeps taking Thomas’ stuff, thinking she’s just ‘borrowing’ it; Fred tells Emil not to let slip that he’s coming back, but of course, he does, and Gro’s none too chuffed; Solveig gets remarried; while Emil spends all his time bumming around Grønnegaard, and has built a stupid ‘mountain’ of wooden mess in the house, for Thomas’ daughter, Melody. They call it the trolls’ mountain, so that Melody thinks Thomas moved to the trolls when he disappeared into the ground. Well, you have to tell children something…
Meanwhile, Gro is still making the most half-baked art installations since Crystal Tipps, from Crystal Tipps and Alistair, stuck a random bunch of metal together in 30 seconds, took it into an art shop, and they instantly put it on display for £500.
I thought, in the later episodes, it was starting to get a bit more meat on its bones, but towards the end, the main storyline felt very rushed and/or forgotten about, in a bid to reach some sort of conclusion to draw a line under The Legacy for good.
The Legacy is broadcast in 16:9 and this Blu-ray in is crisp and clear 1080p high definition, looking pin-sharp throughout, as you’d expect, and looks fantastic on my Panasonic 50″ Plasma TV.
The sound is in DTS HD 5.1 and is fine, but there’s nothing to speak of going on in the surround channel. However, we still occasionally get the haunting guitar strumming of the main theme, sounding like the incidental music from zombie-apocalyptic future videogame The Last Of Us.
Once again, there are zero extras.
The Legacy is mostly in Danish with occasional dialogue in English, and characters cutting between the two. Annoyingly, the English dialogue isn’t subtitled so as characters sometimes talk quickly, some of this dialogue might get missed and you think, for a moment, that the subtitlers have nipped out the back for a break.
The menu features some subtle animation plus a small piece of the theme, while chapters are better than previous Nordic dramas have been served, with 7 per episode. Arrow have also placed some Nordic Noir trailers before the main menu – they’re skippable, but they should really be placed in an extras menu.
The Legacy Season 3 is released tomorrow on Blu-ray and DVD, and click on the packshot for the full-size version.
Also available is the complete trilogy on Blu-ray and DVD.
The Legacy Trilogy Series trailer
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FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS |
2.5 10 7 0 |
| OVERALL | 5 |
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 9 * 55 minutes (approx)
Year: 2015
Released: May 29th 2017
Cat.no: FCD1528
Chapters: 7 per epsiode
Picture: 1080p High Definition
Sound: DTS HD Master Audio 5.1
Languages: Danish, plus some English
Subtitles: English
Widescreen: 1.78:1 (HDTV)
Directors: Heidi Maria Faisst, Pernilla August, Trine Dyrholm and May el-Toukhy
Producers Karoline Leth
Creator: Maya Ilsøe
Series writing credits: Maya Ilsøe, Maja Jul Larsen, Heidi Maria Faisst, Lolita Belstar, Mia Stensgaard, Tommy Bredsted and Nanna Westh
Music: Magnus Jarlbo, Sune Martin and Sebastian Öberg
Cast :
Gro Grønnegaard: Trine Dyrholm
Signe Larsen: Marie Bach Hansen
Frederik Grønnegaard: Carsten Bjørnlund
Emil Grønnegaard: Mikkel Boe Følsgaard
Solveig Riis Grønnegaard: Lene Maria Christensen
Robert Eliassen: Trond Espen Seim
Lone Ramsbøll: Kirsten Lehfeldt
Lise Larsen: Anette Katzmann
John Larsen: Jens Jørn Spottag
Kim: Peter Hesse Overgaard
Aksel: Mikkel Arndt
Villads Grønnegaard: Victor Stoltenberg Nielsen
Hannah Grønnegaard: Karla Løkke
Ole: Morten Kirkskov
Jensen: Peter Gantzler
Karin: Pernilla August
Nick: Simon Bennebjerg
Melody: Smilla My Dahl Hougaard
Lea: Camilla Lehmann
Pitu: Sonny Lindberg
Katja: Maria Carmen Lindegaard
Klaus: Henrik Birch
Rikke: Barbro Skolmen
Malik: Steven Sørensen
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.