icepick48

After enjoying many excellent Danish TV series (The Killing , Borgen, Kroniken and others) and Swedish films I half expected their Norse cousins had something good to offer. Sadly this was not the case.

The star of this series is Norway. The beautifully shot fjords and landscapes are stunning but this is all.

The story line is very poor with huge plot holes and unrealistic scenarios combined with very poor, OTT acting and a shockingly bad script. I really tried to finish the series but couldn't get past episode 6.

Summary (Spoiler Alert) There is a company in a town in a fjord in Norway makes solar cells (very handy for a place that is mainly dark for 8 months of the year) and employs directly and indirectly everyone in the village. 20 years ago the main character Aksel is accused of murdering his girlfriend and is found guilty. At the last moment another girlfriend gives him an alibi. He is upset and disappears to Malaysia where he changes his name, marries a Chinese wife who gives birth to a Norwegian speaking son who converses with his mother in English. Meanwhile back in Norway (current time) the company loses a sale and immediately is on the rocks until the father of the murdered girl phones the missing Aksel in Malaysia and asks for the help of his asset stripping Chinese company (which seems to have no Chinese employees). He of course agrees and flies back to Norway to meet the CEO/owner of the company who is also the mother of the dead girl. She still believes Aksel is the killer and still burns about 20 candles daily at her outdoor shrine on the fjord. He meets up with his mother who is some deranged Norse hillbilly who isn't pleased to see him so he buys her a house. She doesn't want the house so he moves in and starts bonking the surviving girlfriend. The wife turns up in town unannounced. You think this is bad. It goes downhill from here.

I've seen 3 episodes now and while the show brings nothing new to the genre it's sort of enjoyable so far.

There are some issues however.

1) Casting - Ashley Judd, Nick Eversman and Italian Interpol guy perform well but I can't say much for the rest of the cast. Cliff Curtis is normally solid but seems to be acting in a soapie here. The actress playing Mary is not convincing and her character is woeful and annoying. The blonde baddie chick on the boat has 3 accent changes per minute, all of them bad. Must be someone's girlfriend to get this role.

2) Scenery - if you are the director shooting a scene in Rapallo, then stick to Rapallo. Don't go panning shots in San Margharita or Portofino unless of course you are getting a kickback from the local tourist bureau.

3) Plot - we are expected to suspend belief with this sort of genre but seriously, a housewife who is 10 years out of the CIA can take out 2 hulks on the boat with single karate chops.

She has 6 or more current passports.

The baddies take out the blonde colleague who is performing badly rather than Ashley Judd.

The boat auction - starting bid for the average size boat is 24 Million Euros which rises to 100 million, This was a large runabout worth about 200K. Plus, no one was allowed to look inside the boat.

It's all a bit silly but I am intrigued to find out why the husbands killer would want to kidnap the son 10 years later. Maybe the husband is not dead which would give rise to even more logic gymnastics. I hope they don't jump the shark or even worse, drag it on for "Lost" proportions before they arrive at some inadequate finale.

The benchmark in the last year for spy thrillers (in my opinion) is "Homeland" and this is not close.