Clark

The editing and directing is brilliant, fast paced and very similar to directors like Tarantino and Edgar Wright. The fast cutting and great acting from Skarsgård makes this series very enjoyable to watch. The story is based on true events, which makes this possible to watch without cringing. And yes, not everything might be true and some might be exaggerated, but it has to be when it's being made into a comedy series like this. Great series.

As Episode 1 of "Clark" (2022 release from Sweden); 6 episodes of about 55 min each) opens, it is "Trollhattan 1947" as a Swedish woman is about to give birth, but only when the baby decides it's ready to come out! "My first jailbreak", comments the Clark Olofsson character in the voice-over. It is the beginning of a wild ride. After a quick brush on his youth, we go to 1965, when he was 16-17 and gets into trouble for stealing from the Swedish Prime Minister's summer house. No, really! At this point we are less than 15 minutes into Episode 1.

Couple of comments: this is the latest from Swedish director Jonas Akerland, best known for his many music videos (which has won him 3 Grammys). Here he takes a look at what is being billed as Sweden's first "celebrity gangster", and whose bank robberies led to the term "Stockholm Syndrome". This is anything but your ordinary true-crime mini-series. In fact, with clever editing and by approaching this with irreverence, Akerland, tongue firmly in cheek, delivers a zany and thoroughly entertaining mini-series. The best episodes are the early ones, when we are fully submersed in the 1960s. It felt at times like Pink Panther-meets-Austin Powers, but much zippier. (Be sure to check out the many, many cars from that era. Just fabulous.) Bill Skarsgard (as Clark) is seemingly very much enjoying himself with this series. And why not.

"Clark" premiered last week on Netflix, releasing all 6 episodes at once. If you are in the mood for a true crime mini-series that is anything but ordinary, I'd readily suggest you check this out, and draw your own conclusion.

Different and entertaining, funny fast paced series. This is how your life could be, if you don't care about anything or anyone - adventurous and partylike.

A serie that is a mixture of a friendly and clever criminal and a pathetic unprepared Swedish police. Therefore, so the history had to be told as a comedy.

Clark is a fun show with a dark undertone that comes up more and more towards the end. It has the same buildup as the wolf of Wall Street where you're dragged into the fun world of a criminal with a lot of charisma and no compassion for anyone but himself. The cast is stellar, Bill Skarsgård (It) holds your attention through the show, the straight grounded detective, played by Villhelm Blomgren (Midsommar), is mostly the butt of the joke in most scenes he's in and is seen as incompetent, but he works as someone who's generally just Clark's consciousness.

The show is pretty well paced, with some sequences slowing things down at times, but then it speeds right back on with montages of things happening all the time. The series' director is Jonas Åkerlund, Bathory drummer/cofounder, and director of music videos and movies. I saw Lords of Chaos and was a little worried it would disappoint, but the style from that movie put here worked wonders, it had a certain Guy Ritchie feel to it.

All in all, this was just a lot of rambling, but the series is good. There's a lot of style here, it clearly shows, but the lack of substance through the show is often felt yet it fits this show quite well. It's Swedish TV-show about a real-life Swedish gangster, made by an internationally critically acclaimed Swedish director and actors, scored by a Swedish prog legend, Mikael Åkerfeldt, cofounder and mastermind of Opeth. Doesn't get anymore Swedish than this.