 |
| The actors who play the siblings and half siblings from "The Legacy" |
I write a fair bit about bereavement and the many aspects of loss. I am mindful that the loss of a family member is a permanent one, and is often grieved in many different ways at different times throughout the remainder of our lives.
 |
| Key characters of "The Legacy". I have not cared this much about the characters in a series and where the author/creator of the series takes them since BBC's Monarch of the Glen. |
Quite accidentally, I stumbled on a television series from Denmark which is captioned in English. In English, the series is called "The Legacy" although the translation of the name in Danish is actually Arvingerne, "The Inheritors" or probably most correctly, "The Heirs". The Legacy is a brilliantly written and developed story of the four adult children of a famous Danish artist who lived a rather free life from the sixties on. Her sudden death leaves her three children reeling. Before her passing she reveals to her fourth child, who has been adopted and who does not know her, that she is not only her mother, but that she wishes to leave the estate home and acreage she owns to her. "The Legacy" is a beautifully acted series of this family. Each of these adult children have damages from their family of origin. Each of them occupied a different place in the family constellation and therefore their damages and inabilities differ. Each of them in the face of such stress are doing things they should not, and yet each of them are grieving in their own way and trying to get needs met which were apparently long unmet in their families of origin. They simply don't get that not only was their relationship with their mother a time limited proposition, but their relationship with one another is as well.
 |
| Some of the key actors in "The Legacy" during a break. |
The series is complex, well acted with some acting veterans familiar even to myself. The character development is very strong which adds to the realism. "The Legacy" is a picture of how a family hopes they might not act toward full or half siblings, yet when property which means something to each of them is up for grabs, they find themselves acting in a manner in which most of us would not be proud. The series has been produced by DR and written by creator and chief writer Maya Ilsøe, who has said “You don’t know your family until you inherit with them.” True enough !
I highly recommend this series especially to anyone who has ever settled an estate or been excluded from one. It will leave you both nodding your head and shedding a tear of understanding what it's like to be left after a sudden death, with some key and pivotal questions.
Daniel may actually have watched this series had he remained on Earth. I think his observation may have been that the legacy spoken of, is not, in fact, the ten million kroner house that everyone is fighting over in the first half of the first series. The legacy may actually be the damage and the dysfunction taught to them in their childhoods by the actions of their talented, creative, but extremely self centered mother and their fathers.
Update:
To those of you who wrote me to ask, I am told there are ten episodes in the initial season and seven more episodes coming in the second season. I am told that an inferior attempt at an American remake is coming to the US soon. I think I'll skip it and buy this one on DVD.
