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Families Like Ours
BBC iPlayer (UK); no US release date yet announced

I recently wrote a piece for New Scientist lamenting the lack of a wildly popular TV drama about climate change. A few short weeks later, along comes (BBC iPlayer), a wildly popular (in its native Denmark) TV drama about climate change. Patience was never my strong suit.

While I climb down from my high horse, let me tell you a little bit about it. It is the first series from director Thomas Vinterberg, co-founder of the stripped-back, low-budget Dogme 95 film movement. It is about a wealthy family during a nationwide evacuation of Denmark, as rising seas are about to drown the country. And it could well be the climate drama I was hoping for, one to shock us all into some semblance of action – if it can reach a wider audience.

Nineteen-year-old Laura (Amaryllis August) is in her final year of high school and lives in a leafy suburb of Copenhagen with her father Jacob (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) and stepmother Amalie (Helene Reingaard Neumann). Her future looks bright: she is a good student and is in a new relationship with Elías (Albert Rudbeck Lindhardt). But when Amalie’s brother Nikolaj (Esben Smed) learns that, in a week, the government will announce a total evacuation of the country, her life is turned upside down.

Armed with their insider knowledge, Jacob and Nikolaj scramble to sell their properties and obtain cash from foreign banks before the announcement. Nikolaj and his husband Henrik (Magnus Millang) have a safe route to the UK. Jacob sets up a business to allow his family to move to Paris on work visas – even Laura’s mother Fanny (Paprika Steen). The future still looks bright, relatively speaking – until their money and connections can no longer protect them, and Laura is forced to choose between her father, her mother and Elías.

This could well be the climate drama I was hoping for, one to shock us all into some semblance of action

There are no scenes of bursting sea defences or flooding homes here. Instead, wealth – or the lack of it – propels almost all of the drama. Time and again, the family decide to exploit the inequalities that have made them comfortable for so long. Life has always tended to work out, so they approach the crisis with the same hubris.

That’s one reason why a teenager is the perfect protagonist for this story. When Laura makes impulsive, selfish decisions under the assumption that the world will be kind to her, it is far more palatable than when her older relatives do the same thing. And with Denmark soon to vanish from the map, staying in the comfort of childhood is no longer an option. Every available path into adulthood means losing one thing or another to survive.

Families Like Ours has been called unrealistic in some quarters. It is true that neither Denmark’s drowning nor its mass evacuation is terribly likely. But that certainly isn’t the case for the Kiribatis and Vanuatus of the world. Those of us in higher-income nations shouldn’t need to see the suffering of wealthy, white Westerners to understand the situation facing small island states – but, sadly, that may be exactly what is required.

In that sense, Families Like Ours has pretty much everything I wanted from a climate change drama – including enough hope to keep you watching. Without more publicity, though, it is unlikely to attract a large audience in the UK (and there are no announced plans to air it in the US). So if you do watch the series and like it, tell your friends – let’s make this a word-of-mouth hit.

Bethan also recommends…

Years and Years
Netflix (UK); Max (US)
I have recommended this dystopian series before, but it is a great counterpart to Families Like Ours. It follows one family over 15 years as the UK slides towards fascism and climate change intensifies.

The Hunt
Directed by Thomas Vinterberg
A teacher becomes a pariah in his community after being wrongly accused of abusing a child in this heart-wrenching film about mob mentality.

Bethan Ackerley is a subeditor at New Scientist. She loves sci-fi, sitcoms and anything spooky. Follow her on X @‌inkerley