Post Mortem: No One Dies in Skarnes

Post Mortem: No One Dies in Skarnes: Horror, (sort of Nordic Noir) and Black Comedy merge in this tale of small town Norwegian life. A woman is found dead in a field but comes back to life on the autopsy table. Soon she has strange thirsts, yes, she's a vampire. Some in the town know whats really going on, a mystery that dates back to her mother's death decades ago. There's also the family undertaker business which is going under as not enough corpses are going underground. A gritty dark thriller leavened y gallows humour and the keystone antics of the local cops. Directed by Harald Zwart and Petter Holmsen, written by Holmsen, Sofia Lersol Lund and Øyvind Rune Stålen. On Netflix. 8/10.

This story is interesting, original approach about something near to vampirism, but inherited from mother. It worths watching because is a short series and will not get your time so much.

Nowadays if any producer wanna make his vampire series or movies stand out from the crowd, he really needa think out of the box with something we audiences've never thought of. Examples like The String, From Dusk til Dawn series (both the movie and TV) and the recent Blood Red Sky. Without further ado, Post Mortem is certainly a good example of the genre: a funeral agency in debt and a not-so-blood-sucking vampire. To make it straight to you, it don't even think she is a vampire at all. She is more like a poor victim of bloodthirsty tackling her ordeal.

First thing first, any sci-fi element in the series has been carefully removed so that it wont be another sort of sci-fi V-War. The main actress has been carefully chosen so that she doesnt look like another eyecatching Vampiria. In fact she gives me an impression of a neighbouring girl n her acting is simply flawless. Look at her facial expression and body language as an blood-addict!!! The whole story is thus framed into the interaction of the girl and her declining family business of funeral agency. A funeral agency which is about to go bankruptcy, ah, kinda new inspiring idea.

What comes next is the dark humour that we can see in every episode. For humour it means its not for everyone coz we could have very different cultural background. To me Nordic noir is something not seen everyday. So. I buy it for sure!

Scandinavian dark humour could be fun, as long as you could keep up with the pace...... which is the rub. But we ve got choices.

This series would be your cup of tea/coffee if u r a vampire genre fan n u r dying for something different. But here is the catch: every element is minimalistic in the series. If the first 2 episodes can't impress u or make u smile once or twice, then u should better knock it off.

I loved it. Is it super innovative? No. Was it kind of predictabe? Yes. Is that a bad thing? Not at all. This show's concept has been done before, but this show tried to perfect it and it delivered something lovely.

The comedy side of it is subtle. It doesn't make you laugh out loud, but the series doesn't take itself too seriously. It's a different kind of humor from the over-the-top kind of humor that American shows can have.

I liked the pacing. Finally a show that's not flashing guns and explosions and twists and drama every 5 minutes. It wasn't slow either, plenty of progress every episode.

And the show even had many likable characters.

Although I'm really thankful that it didn't end on a horrible cliffhanger, I'm really hoping it gets to continue in a second season.

This has the right mix of ingredients. I don't really like comedy where people try to crack jokes every second. On the other hand I don't like shows that get too doom and gloom.

This series strikes a pretty good balance I think. It has elements of Nordic noire and even some hints of horror movies. Yet there is also comedy. More the subtle kind. Not where people are making obvious jokes but more about the absurdity of a lot of the situations the main characters get themselves into.

I would say this is a pretty good example of Norwegian humor, which can often be both sardonic, self deprecating and surreal.

The punchline "No One Dies in Skarnes" comes from the fact that one of the main characters runs a funeral service, but is in deep financial trouble because seemingly nobody ever dies in Skarnes. A kind of reflection of the fact that Skarnes is a small idyllic Norwegian town without any serious crimes, accidents etc.

Then all this gets turned on its head with the first apparent death in a long time. It reminds me a little bit about Pulp fiction in how main characters discuss very mundane things in the midst of a rather extreme situation.

Once you get what is going on there isn't really a lot of surprising twists. But the series isn't lesser for that reason in my opinion. The fun watching is often simply in seeing how the characters will deal with the utterly bizarre situations they find themselves in.