telttu-ella

While the first season has a surreal feel in its comedic take on the Soviet era, the second season is truly surreal in its depiction of an imaginary Soviet present. Americans are defecting to USSR, and only the Japanese are rich enough to pay for smuggled art. Soviet science can cure cancer and rejuvenate people, but Soviet products are as bulky as ever, as Mikhail finds when he is handed a "pocket phone" with a number disc. Like in the first season, every episode comes with a crime mystery to solve, while Mikhail continues his obsessive chase for "Red" and tries figure out how to return to the 2011 that he calls home.

The Ukraine situation being what it is now (in November 2022), I just had to re-watch the both seasons, to get a glimpse into the Russian soul. Unfortunately, the series still leaves me feeling that life in Russia is too alien for me to "get" every reference, to really understand which detail is just comedy, which is a political jab, and so on. But political it is, and I would be surprised if this series is not censored in today's Russia.

Trolltagna, written by Kurre Österberg and directed by Pontus Dammert, is a miniseries based on the folklore that Österberg collected in the Swedish-speaking Bromarv region on Finland's south-western coastline. 1970's was pretty much the last chance to collect oral tradition from old folks that grew up and lived without TV.

The story opens with a woman walking on an unpaved village road, making odd gestures while talking to herself, seemingly, and a little girl asking her grandfather why the aunt is behaving so strangely. The grandfather then tells how her whole family has succumbed to trolls, while audience sees all kinds of havoc caused by these trolls. The woman's father had bought the trolls from a traveling salesman to scare away a neighbor, so he could get the neighbor's land. Or some such thing. Anyway, after successfully achieving the result he had wanted, the father then neglected to pay for the trolls to the salesman, who in turn left the trolls to harass greedy man's own family. Eventually, until only one of the children, now a middle-aged or older woman, is left.

The voice over has someone local speaking in the local accent and dialect, which in itself is wonderful to hear, but the story is so chilling that it has left an indelible imprint in lots of minds in Finland. People here use Internet forums to ask if someone else remembers it, and where to find it. I have only ever seen the series once, and very much yearn to see it again.

Generally, I regard busy pace as a cover-up for hollowness, and I often turn away from comedies that come off as too ADHD for me. Yet this fussy production managed to completely hold my attention throughout, without ever overloading my nerves. A big part of the success is the strong emotional presence that especially Nader Khademi (as Marwan) and Arben Bala (as Khabib) had shining through, despite the caricaturish nature of the gallery of characters. Another part I guess is the particular ways the production intertwines threads of tragedy into it all. Comedy cannot exist without a touch of tragedy, and the crux is how you balance the two.