Post Mortem - Nessuno muore a Skarnes

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.

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.

Wonderful show with a cast that handles the dark storyline with confidence and an easy going charm. The four leads nail their roles perfectly and capture the tone of the show perfectly. Hopefully this will be the first season of many.

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.

I agree with the praise thus far in most of the other reviews. This fresh and relatively light take on an old genre (like not even using the "V" word) was a treat. For a change, I didn't feel there were too many episodes for the content. The ending works as a one-and-done or as the basis for more seasons - whichever way the financing wind blows. That's viewer consideration of the highest order.

But let's not overlook the role of the score. I'm usually not very conscious of that element, apart from Tarantino flicks, since he invests so heavily in beating us over the head with his playlists. Brilliantly. In this case, the background music finds the sweet spot between eerie and quirky to perfectly complement what we're seeing. Silje Katralen earned the right to take a bow for her excellent contribution as music supervisor.