Home Ground

Fresh, joyful, exciting, emotional, proud. This one has it all, and set in the beautiful scenery of Norway's mountainous west coast fjords, in the small town of Ulsteinvik, the setting brings it all together. Beautifully!

Ane Dahl Torp delivers a solid, credible and relatable character in "Helena Mikkelsen" through all 10 episodes. While she starts out a bit flat and mysterious, she let's both us, the viewers, and her team mates in on who she really is and what makes her tick. There are many other good characters with great character development through this first season, which makes this show good and relatable, also for those completely uninterested in football.

The show focuses on some topics that have quite recently been in the media, with both "Me-too" relatable content, as well as stereotypes towards women and how they cope in male dominated fields of work. The show takes all of this on head-to-head without ever becoming too politically correct, educating, or in any way trying to preach any one message to the viewer. It also opens a window into the mind of someone struggling with obsessive compulsive disorder, for those of us lucky enough to never have experienced mental illness first hand.

Heimebane made me laugh, cry and stand up and cheer. Objectively it's probably an 8,5 or something, but who ever heard about an objective supporter? As the locals in Ulsteinvik would have said: "Great", or "Steikje bra" 10/10 !

First season was very enjoyable and well written. That in mind I'm going to skip the second season. It looks like that original writer had nothing to do with the second season and reading the reviews and watching the episode scorings, it's safe to assume that this show suffers from the same faith as the Goliath. Luckily the first season was conclusive so there was really no need for the second season.

Hats off to Mr Johan Fasting and actors for the marvelous first season.

Very well played and a good script!! Many unknown actors, very good main characters. Worth viewing!!

Where do you even learn to play like this? Her character is amazing, strong, credible, real and so human. I think this is one of the best tv series of course in line with Queen's Gambit and Godless. Just really good drama. I would love to see season 3 but I think 2 made it whole. Loved the last locker room speech. Ane is just plain great.

Although I have previously seen the topic of a female coach/manager been tackled (cough), by the British way back in 1989 ! in "The Manageress" with the always lovely Cherie Lunghi, it is safe to say that we haven't gotten much further in this development. Therefore this new Norwegian show is a welcome addition to the discussion of egalitarianism in sports management.

The female protagonist here is surely competent and well aware of all the pitfalls and opposition she faces during this first season. Personally I found the subplots involving her daughter a bit off, as if they couldn't really figure out what she wanted - which is probably realistic enough, but makes for bad storytelling. Also it is glaringly obvious that Jon Carew is a former player and not an actor :-), however most of the rest of the cast is really good and the location scenery is just beautiful. Norwegian fjords, I mean - come on... NRK (Norwegian PBS) is on a hot streak with their TV-shows these days - good on them.