Hellfjord

First when I started to watch this TV series, it was bit slow and well... I didn't know what I was watching, bit like what? Is this supposed to be funny? I'm from Finland, so I have seen many Nordic TV series where people just stare each others for about minutes and then say something lame. After watching the 3 first episodes I was still confused. Should this be funny or boring? Then I slowly got it. The show is the most funny black comedy that makes you think all of the time "Is this funny?" , "Should I laugh here?". When I got my Heureka! moment, I have been laughing my guts out! Almost every scene is an a sketch, sometimes you have to rewind to see what the hell just happened, and that sucks on Netflix, but that what life is in Hellfjord! Well... Pihla Viitala as "Riina" is so good, being a Finn. I think most of the viewers did not understand what Riina said to Kobba when he thought Riina had put an spell on him on the 4th episode, but even I had to rewind that scene to get it. Well, this is one of the most hilarious TV series that I have seen in a while. It is a comedy, but the humor is so dark, that you're really not sure, if you should laugh or yawn ones head off or just die laughing, watching this show. The humor is not-so-American and obvious, more like from silent movies, like Chaplin and Tati. Most hilarious and intelligent dark comedy I have seen in a while!

This show owes a lot to Hot Fuzz - city cop in small town of yokel characters with something unspoken afoot, and the second half of the first episode even borrows from the very Edgar Wright quick-cut close- ups "getting ready" sequence. Even almost a "greater good" scene.

I'm reviewing early as I'm not sure I'll finish the series. If I hadn't seen Hot Fuzz I may be a little more forgiving, they may have taken this setup to different places, and there will be different gags so maybe I'll stick with it...but if you haven't watched Hot Fuzz, you'll see so many similarities it may feel a little overfamilar

You might watch the first episode of this and be forgiven for thinking it's a simplistic slapstick comedy that doesn't seem to work - but you'd be wrong.

There's a lot to turn you off in this series if your previous idea of comedy is Friends or The Big Bang Theory - not that there's anything wrong with those choices, it's just that if that is your taste, this may a long long long way away from that style.

There is a great deal of thought and side angles to this humour. It's well written, very well acted and packed with ridiculously mad character interaction - non of which I'll cover here for to do so would spoil it for those few who will go on to enjoy this short series. And those characters are fabulous. Each with their own dire flaws and foibles and each acted to perfection.

I urge you to try this series and understand that only ten percent of the people who do will be glad they did. But for those ten percent who's humour this fits with, they'll be forever grateful.

Enjoy.

I watched this with no expectations and was hooked by the opening scene but not convinced by the overall project. The comedy swings between slapstick and very, very dark. The violence is mostly comic book stuff but requires a strong stomach at times. The story is uneven and the pacing unconvincing, with a police officer on a 3-month fixed-term posting who seems totally amazed to find it coming to an end.

I suspect that it meant far more to its Norwegian target audience, but jokes about Swedes, Finns and Icelanders don't translate well into English. The main character is of middle / far-Eastern appearance and this might have been another cultural reference that went over my head. I suspect the cast to be a ready-made comedy group, like Monty Python, the Chaser or Saturday Night Live, as two characters are played by woefully unconvincing actors in pound shop make-up, although this might also be Norwegian humour in action. The location, in the far North of Norway, meant the whole show could take place in daylight, but a few long shadows would have been more convincing.

I stayed with it to the end but feel it could have been comfortably fitted into a conventional six episodes rather than a flabby seven. Overall there were enough laugh out loud moments to keep me entertained, but only just.

Hellfjord is a prime example of missed opportunities. It has a great premise, and some suitable actors in its cast, but a number of creative choices (some of them just plain lazy) turn this show into a dead duck. Marketed as a mix between Lilyhammer and Twin Peaks, Hellfjord may have some of the absurdity of the latter, but none of the warmth and wit of the former.

The series tries to score with gross-out scenes and potty-humour - it's like a trip through the brain of a psychopathic 6-year-old. None of this is entertaining, all it achieves is to paint a picture of creative helplessness and to shine a light on the many ways in which the writing in this series lacks true originality. Toning down all the nonsense and toddleresque jokes by at least 30% would have been a start to improve the show, but then the writing would have needed to be better in order to fill in the gaps. Throwing all the potty-humour and every bawdy joke they could think of at the screen, the writers stuffed the script so full of this kind of crap (and similar bad choices), so that there was no room left for any actual humour. The writing completely fails to tap into the rich reservoir of Nordic humour, the subtleties and the oddities of which we all love so much. Very little of this can be found in this show.

The other massive failure in this show is the casting/acting. I have no idea who thought it was a good idea to have the characters of Kobba and Kose played by young people in bad make-up (Stig Frode Henriksen and Maria Bock). The questionable acting and writing choices surrounding these characters aside, it would have improved the show a lot if they had chosen seasoned actors of the same age as those characters. Preferably character actors that could carry these roles through their experience alone.

Only by episode 6 (out of 7) does this show start to become interesting, but by then it has completely changed its tone because it is heading for a dramatic showdown. And while drama and comedy work well together, drama and silliness don't. That change in tone is so sudden and abrupt that it feels like an entirely different show. The final episode then offers us a Tarantino-style shoot-out which is completely undermined by the following scenes which see the show revert to the inane silliness of the earlier episodes.

It is a shame that such a great idea has been squandered by numerous questionable choices in production. Rating: 4.5 out of 10.