Scandal. Suspense. Shady CIA actions. Decisions that will affect future generations. Good ingredients for a TV drama series, right? What if I added that they’re all playing out against a backdrop of contemporary national politics? Wait, don’t leave: I didn’t say this show was about the hellscape that is American politics! We’re going to Denmark, because Borgen is back on Netflix with a new season: Borgen: Power & Glory.

The series, which premiered in 2010, revolves around the political career of Birgitte Nyborg (Sidse Babett Knudsen). Originally the leader of the Moderates, Birgitte becomes Denmark’s first female Prime Minister when her predecessor, Liberal Lars Hesselboe (Søren Spanning), is revealed to have used his governmental credit card to cover his wife’s shopping spree. Over the subsequent two seasons, Birgitte grapples with her husband’s expectations now that she’s in charge of the world’s 12th largest economy; the effect of her absence on her two young children; and maintaining both power and her principles — which, given Denmark’s parliamentary system of government, can be in constant flux.

It’s this last element that delivers most of the show’s most nail-biting moments and gives lie to comparisons between Borgen and The West Wing. The political (and dramatic) possibilities of a multi-party system are so much broader that the show’s third season revolved around Birgitte returning from political retirement to challenge her successor for the Moderate leadership, losing, forming a new party, and competing in a snap election. Other key characters in Birgitte’s story include journalist Katrine Fønsmark (Birgitte Hjort Sørensen); Birgitte’s spin doctor, Kasper Juul (Pilou Asbæk); and TV1 news producer Torben Friis (Søren Malling).

That season closes with Birgitte reaching across the aisle to Hesselboe, pulling him slightly left by bringing her New Democrat members into his government, and being rewarded with the position of Foreign Minister (the parliamentary equivalent of a U.S. Secretary of State). It aired in early 2013, which we may safely call a rather different era for both politics and media coverage. (How different? Birgitte vanquishes her nearest centrist rival, Jens Jacob Tychsen’s Jacob Kruse, by baiting him into snapping at her in a televised leaders’ debate.)

Nearly 10 years later, the show’s extremely contemporary new season — there are references not just to COVID but to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — finds Birgitte struggling just a little. She’s Foreign Minister again, but now under Prime Minister Signe Kragh (Johanne Louise Schmidt), who is: (1) the leader of the Labour party; (2) 41 to Birgitte’s 53; and (3) not just a woman but a girlboss cliché who tags all of her many social media posts with #TheFutureIsFemale. Their competitive relationship is further strained when a huge oil deposit is confirmed in Greenland. Birgitte, having won partly on the New Democrats’ green policies, comes out against drilling…but then has to walk back her public statements when it turns out that, actually, Denmark would like the trillions of kroner that oil would be worth.

As though a touchy boss wasn’t enough hassle, Birgitte also has to deal with her son Magnus (Lucas Lynggard Tønnesen), now a 21-year-old college student full of correct yet shrill opinions about the environment. She’s already been faintly irritated by him before she finds out that he and a couple of friends stole a truck and freed a bunch of pigs who then had to be euthanized anyway.

Lots of shows that ended well come back for a sequel season anyway. The problem with so many — Will & Grace, for example — is that they chase the same audience without having anything new to say . But Power & Glory’s inciting event — the discovery of oil in Greenland — has it all: unimaginable amounts of money; multiple nations fighting; extractive energy vs. the grim climate future; and the continuing effects of white colonization of Indigenous land (since Greenland, whose population is majority Inuit, is one of the three constituent countries that compose the Kingdom of Denmark).

Birgitte’s abrupt policy U-turn on the oil immediately costs her support and credibility, enough that her closest confidants — Katrine, who served as her party spokesperson in season 3, and her mentor, Bent Sejrø (Lars Knutzon) — are pretty sure she’s going to have to resign over it. Apparently they’ve forgotten that in 2022, no one in politics experiences shame, and nothing they do has any consequences. Birgitte may be betraying her convictions, but she retains her innate political talents; she keeps stepping from one bad decision to the next without losing her position. Why she is so intent on holding onto power if she’s using it to pursue agendas doesn’t even believe in is the question of the season, and one Birgitte rarely stops scrambling long enough to confront.

Birgitte’s not only badly adapting to this term as Foreign Minister; she’s also badly adapting to perimenopause. Having survived breast cancer in an earlier season, she’s a poor candidate for the available hormonal prescriptions, and the show goes deep on the physical and psychological realities she faces. Birgitte is frank with underlings about her hot flashes, keeping a fairly full wardrobe at work in case of emergencies; she’s also barely eating, and sleeping poorly. But Birgitte also confides to Katrine, before everything starts to go wrong, that she’s never been happier: as a divorced empty-nester, she doesn’t have to feel guilty about being a distracted mother or neglectful wife, and can focus all her energy on her job.

Katrine also has a new job this season — as Head Of News Operations at TV1, where she started as an on-air reporter. Right away, she clashes with anchorwoman Narciza Aydin (Özlem Saglanmak). The issue seems to be that, as a former journalist herself, Katrine can’t stop micromanaging Narciza’s editorial decisions, but I say “seems” because we get so little insight into her thinking — and the more the situation deteriorates, the more unreasonable Katrine looks. Clearly, Katrine’s and Birgitte’s plotlines are supposed to parallel each other, but there’s so much more going on in Birgitte’s — including a whole new cast of characters handling logistics and negotiations in Greenland — that Katrine’s feels sketchy and rushed. Early on, Birgitte and Katrine agree that, in light of their new gigs, it would be inappropriate for them to socialize. Perhaps, then, the point is to show how crucial it is for those people in power to keep up with the few true friends who will check them.

Previous seasons followed more of an issue-of-the-week format, but Power & Glory very rarely strays from the Greenland oil and really gets into the weeds on all the implications. I finished the season knowing more than I ever expected about Knud Rasmussen, Greenland’s strategic geopolitical importance, the limits of Danish power on Greenland’s self-government, and the range of views regarding Greenlandic independence, among many other topics. When, in the season’s penultimate episode, Narciza reminds us that the oil discovery was only announced three weeks earlier, I was frankly shocked.

What makes Borgen so satisfying—even if, as Knudsen believes, this is its true last season—is that it doesn’t bother half-assing any “gotta see both sides” baloney, the way so many other scripted political shows do. Over and over, the audience does see that there are two sides to a given issue. But (with very few exceptions) one is right, and the other is indefensible. Borgen treats its viewers like intelligent adults — but adults who aren’t above light soap opera vibes.