I’ve been in denial about the end of Forbrydelsen/The Killing, the ground-breaking Danish crime drama that’s enthralled millions of Brits over the course of three series (and got impressively large numbers of us over our foreign-language/subtitling phobias).

But now it’s over: the last ever episodes have aired and Sarah Lund has made her final foray into those those dark, subterranean places with just her trusty torch and woolly jumper for back-up. I will greatly miss her brave, tenacious presence on our screens, not to mention the human flaws that have made her so very interesting and real.

As ever, there will be no spoilers about the denouement here – but I will say the following:

• I thought the final two episodes absolutely made this series.
• In particular, they brought its central themes beautifully to fruition:                                   – the limitations of Old Testament-style justice on the one hand, and of the police      and judicial system on the other                                                                                                    – the corrosive influence of money and power                                                                             – the ways in which parents and society repeatedly fail their children
• The ending is incredibly rich and powerful, and felt surprising in some ways and very fitting in others.

Series 1 of The Killing remains the gold-standard in crime drama for me. This 20-episode investigation, which movingly explored the impact of a single murder on an ordinary family, set a benchmark for excellence that’s very hard to beat. But series 3 has come close, because it allows us to see all three series as one entity, and to recognise that above all, it is Lund’s story that they tell. I will think of them as the ‘Lund trilogy’ from now on.

Vicky Frost’s excellent Guardian blog remains the place to go for an in-depth discussion of the plot (with LOTS of spoilers). There are also new interviews with Sofie Gråbøl in The Telegraph about her feelings on leaving the show and with Søren Sveistrup in Scotland’s Sunday Mail about why it had to end when it did. For all Mrs. Peabody posts on The Killing, click here or on link in the menu above.

*Thanks for the memories, Sarah Lund.

PLEASE REMEMBER IF YOU COMMENT BELOW NOT TO REVEAL ANY SPOILERS!