Darkness: Those Who Write - An Exploration of the Darker Side of Drama

[Trollheart]

An Exploration of the Darker Side of Drama
Nordic Noir, Scandi-Drama and Beyond: Into the Abyss

As I get older and, ever so slightly, wiser, I realise what a complete dick I was when younger. Well, in some cases anyway. Music certainly. Attitude most probably. Another thing that I got completely wrong is that I used to frown on subtitled, or, as we would say, "foreign" movies. If something looked good and I sat down to watch it and subtitles popped up on the screen, I would turn it off. Yeah I know. In that way I probably missed a whole lot of really good movies and some TV shows. I guess I was just ignorant. But in recent years I've learned to embrace the subtitled genre, and look beyond the world of English language to see what amazing drama is out there. And I've discovered  a wealth of, for me, untapped material and some of the best writing I've ever witnessed.

Without changing my attitude and accepting "foreign" material, I would never have been able to have appreciated the majesty, stark beauty and at times side-splitting humour of Ingmar Bergman's cult movie The Seventh Seal or Bruno Ganz's powerhouse performance as Hitler in Der Untergang, but that's only the tip of it. Since accepting, then actively seeking out foreign drama, I've been happily sucked off sorry sucked into a world of dark and gripping crime, mystery, murder and violence. A few names have been coined as catch-all terms for these series, and because the vast majority of them come from Scandinavia words like Scandi-drama and Nordic noir have come to be used to describe them. This isn't always appropriate or accurate, as a) some of the very best "foreign" TV comes from Europe, often eastern Europe, and not all of it is drama, though about 98% of it seems to be.

There are many definitions of whichever term you choose to accept as the "genre tag" - Scandi drama or Nordic noir - here's what Wiki has to say about it: "Nordic noir, also known as Scandinavian noir or Scandi noir, is a genre of crime fiction usually written from a police point of view and set in Scandinavia or Nordic countries. Plain language avoiding metaphor and set in bleak landscapes results in a dark and morally complex mood, depicting a tension between the apparently still and bland social surface and the murder, misogyny, misandry, rape, and racism it depicts as lying underneath. It contrasts with the whodunit style such as the English country house murder mystery. "

For me though this is a little restricted. Also a little confusing: "Plain language avoiding metaphor?" I'm tempted to quote Douglas Adams but I won't. Oh all right, if you insist. "Counterpoint the surrealism of the  underlying metaphor? Death's too good for them." Anyway, I don't know what that means - I've seen plenty of metaphors in the Nordic and other dramas I've watched. And as for "misandry"? I don't even know what that is! It doesn't appear in any of my dictionaries. Which only goes to prove that many explanations on Wiki don't stand up to close examination.

For my money, I'd say (let's stick with this term rather than start interchanging them) Nordic noir is more the, if you will, anti-American drama, which is not to say it's written by people who hate the USA, but that they take a different approach to their drama. It's true to say that the vast majority of Nordic noir shows do not end well, at least for their characters. There is very seldom a happy ending, and as well as this, the protagonist(s) can be often - though not always - seen as mavericks, working outside the law, but not in a Dirty Harry way. Sometimes they're corrupt, sometimes they're fighting corruption, sometimes they have dark secrets and sometimes they're protecting the dark secret of another, or trying to uncover it. In general, the idea of a "buddy movie" type of relationship seems to be frowned on by these writers. A new guy or girl coming into the frame is usually treated either with suspicion or contempt, or both, they may bring their own emotional and professional baggage with them, and though sometimes - though again not always - they prove their worth and are accepted by their partner, this is by no means guaranteed.

You could say, with reasonable correctness, that Nordic noir quite often takes the tropes of police procedurals and cop shows and turns them on their head. These are not always the good guys, and they don't always get their man, or woman. Innocent people die. Children die. Plans do not always work out, and while sometimes superiors are shown to be either too cowardly to rock the boat and take a risk, sometimes too it's the main figures who take that risk and lose everything. A bomb that would, on let's say FBI or Blue Bloods or SWAT, be stopped with seconds to go, in one of these dramas may go off, killing even main characters. A kidnapped child may be recovered, if at all, as a corpse. People get fired, and do not earn redemption and a round of applause as they return to the station or precinct a hero.

You would have to say that if there's one thing that characterises Nordic noir it's reality. These writers do not shy from the hard truths, ones we may prefer not to know, or to pretend not to know. Another thing that impacts very powerfully on this genre is politics, and not in a "the governor won't do it, it's an election year" kind of way, or a senator being saved. We get to the nuts and bolts of real politics here, where the people in power want things to stay as they are, and will quite often use that power to interfere with investigations, engineer cover-ups and even have an offending officer or detective fired - or worse - if they're getting too close to a truth that threatens them. In most of these shows, the old maxim that there's no such thing as an honest politician is ruthlessly driven home, with very few exceptions.

Another thing Nordic noir does, to its credit, is breaks the glass ceiling, so to speak. You'll find as many female protagonists in this genre as male, and if the two work together (and there's no guarantee the latter will be in charge) it may very easily turn out that it is the woman who drives things, and these ladies do not accept being the lesser partner. There's no such thing as the weaker sex in Nordic noir! On the other hand, mostly I guess because of its setting, you'll not find too many black or Asian characters, but that I think is more down to the realistic approach of Nordic noir, rather than an attempt to prevent these races from being represented. In some ways it might be seen as racist (though I don't think so) and in others it's just how it is. You wouldn't, for instance, have a whole slew of dramas set on the African continent and feature a load of white people. Scandinavians are predominantly white, and so this is reflected in its drama.

I would agree, with certain provisos, with most of the rest of the Wiki description. Nordic noir is usually, though not always crime fiction - State of Happiness, a Norwegian family drama based around the discovery of oil, is one example of a series that does not necessarily involve crime, while Occupied and The Inner Circle, which do involve crime, if only peripherally, are more political dramas. Not very often, but there are comedies too (usually black ones) and I'm sure there are other strands of Scandinavian TV I have yet to see in this sphere. But for myself, I would use a slightly different description.

Rain Dogs, Gin-soaked Boys and Gun Street Girls: The Tom Waits of Television

Given the tag, it will come as no surprise that the first characteristic of the genre is that it is almost always dark. It's serious stuff, and there's seldom any room for humour or comic relief. Its characters are seldom if ever the heroes of the likes of say 24 or FBI or Law and Order [insert suffix]; they're flawed, imperfect, often broken people, usually but not always cops or detectives, and usually though not always hooking up with someone either as damaged as they are or their complete opposite, in a Scandinavian take on the "buddy cop" movie, though without the humour, morals and life lessons.

That's another thing Nordic noir does. I call it the Tom Waits of television, because like the man's music, it presents life in all its horrible reality, not as we wish it could be or as Hollywood or the TV networks want us to see it as, but as it is. People are evil, sometimes even the ones we're supposed to be rooting for. Bad things happen to good people. There are often no true resolutions, and many a series ends on a downbeat conclusion. The motives of those who commit crimes - usually rape, paedophilia or murder - are often not explored or explained, or even cared about. To some degree, Nordic noir does an almost Charles Bronson on the bad guys: they're bad and its characters don't give a fuck why they're bad; they just have to be stopped. It's not always the case, but in the ones I've seen the bad guy or girl usually dies rather than be talked down and carted off to prison. Seeing the state of some of the Scandinavian prisons, I'm glad: they look more like hotels than places of incarceration and punishment, and you can't feel that someone sentenced to a long time or even life there has been properly dealt with.

One thing Nordic noir has going for it in spades is the scenery. Be it Denmark, Norway or Sweden, Greenland, Iceland or Croatia, the backdrop is usually quite spectacular. It's also lonely and isolated most of the time. These crimes take place and are investigated in small, out-of-the-way towns and villages, away from the hustle and bustle of the city, so you really get the feeling of being out on the edge, away from civilisation, where help may be a long way off and the characters are on their own. Some of the characters are loners - many, in fact - and some don't have or are unable to form attachments, leaving them without friends or relationships. This often leads to their being seen as "odd", ostracised from their fellows but by the same token able to dedicate themselves totally to the case.

Nordic noir doesn't pull any punches either. When someone is killed in a graphic manner, you see it all. Fair play to BBC4 and Channel 4, the two main channels on which this genre is best represented in the UK, for not bowing to the censors, as, while it's often hard to look at, the uncompromising nature of these shows makes the murder or mutilation that more real, and often even gives you the feeling of watching a documentary or even a live investigation as it progresses. None of the major tropes from more standard cop shows are used: there's not a lot of banging up and down corridors, not a lot of family life shown, hardly ever any pets. Cars used are functional rather than sexy, police sirens and lights are used sparingly, and many cops are shown as being lazy, corrupt, bigoted, incompetent or all four, and often also implicated in the crime. Line of Duty? Nordic noir was doing it when Jed Mercurio was still writing medical drama!

Most series follow a main plot line through all their episodes, a visual novel if you will, the murder or mystery only cleared up in the final episode, or even carrying through into later seasons, such as the four of The Bridge or the two of Before We Die, but some are more episodic and almost modelled on the likes of maybe A Touch of Frost or Inspector Morse, though much darker of course. Thou Shalt Not Kill and Stockholm Requiem spring to mind, as does, to a lesser extent, the French Spiral, which ran for an incredible eight seasons. As you might expect, there are usually twists and turns galore in the less episodic ones, and things do tend to get turned upside down. If you can guess from episode one how a series is going to turn out, you're a better man than I, Gunga Din!

But this journal is not going to cover only Nordic noir and its associated series. As I said, much of the best crime drama I've seen in the last few years comes from Europe, with Belgium's Public Enemy and Poland's Raven among them, and I'll be exploring those too. I mean, essentially, we're talking "foreign TV" or even "subtitled TV", but that isn't anywhere near as cool a title for a journal, and besides, the lion's share of this will be Nordic noir. One thing I have not found, so far anyway, is that any one series is like another. Unlike American and British crime, where you definitely see elements of this in that, and that show could be this show, where sometimes it might seem there's a basic formula and the various writers are just fine-tuning and tweaking it to suit each show, what you get with Nordic noir - and most foreign drama - is clever, incisive, unexpected and original writing that really makes you think, and impresses on nearly every level. Let's just say crossovers between series are at best unlikely.

Of course, that's not to say every show is perfect, or even good. No matter how good the genre, as it were, it will have its turds, and Nordic noir and other foreign drama has produced some poor shows, though almost nothing could be categorised by me as something I wish I hadn't bothered with. Generally, in these - rather rare - circumstances, it just means the show didn't quite live up to the high standard I've now come to expect from this genre. It should be understood from the start that while of course I couldn't order coffee in Norwegian or Danish without being arrested for making indecent suggestions to the waitress, every one of the Nordic noir shows I've seen has been in its original language - with subtitles of course. Some have been so successful that they have been translated into English, or, I should say more accurately, remade in English, such as The Killing, The Bridge and Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy, but I won't be going into them, as I've never seen them, so whether they're as good, better or worse than the originals I couldn't tell you. I don't know of course, but I feel that when shows like those are remade and cast with American or British actors, they may lose something, almost a "dumbed-down" version, perhaps. Anyway as I say I won't be looking at those. Lord knows, there's enough for me to be going on with as it is.

Oh, and before anyone says it, yes, shows like True Detective and even The Wire are more gritty and realistic than about 90 percent of US drama, but I won't be covering them, because two very important criteria, as I mentioned before, are that the drama needs to be produced at least outside of the English-speaking world, and has to have subtitles.

So turn off your central heating, draw the curtains or the blinds, dim the lights and wrap some old blanket around your shoulders as you huddle in front of the TV; if you happen to live in a cabin, so much the better: stick the axe into a log of wood and leave it outside and while you're at it, leave all your preconceptions of crime drama out there too. It's cold, it's dark, it's scary and believe me, if this is your first trip to the land of Nordic noir, you have no idea what's coming.

[Trollheart]

Before I get started on any specifics, here's a list of Nordic noir and other subtitled series, in alphabetical order and arranged via country of origin. Ones I've watched are marked in green, this does NOT reflect what I thought of them, it's simply to show that I have knowledge of them. In the below list all titles are in English, unless otherwise noted. When I review each series separately its native title will be shown and referred to also. The list will of course be added to as new series are produced, or I find out about them, which I often do accidentally.

Note: As I'm not a big film watcher I'm only including TV series here.

Also note: Nordic noir shows live and die by their twists, so I won't be reviewing any of these in great detail, because I wouldn't want to spoil any of them if you're planning on watching them. Just a general outline and my own thoughts and impressions. However, if you feel that even those sketchy details might ruin one for you, just don't read it. There's not going to be any need for spoilers, but it's up to you how much you read.


ARGENTINA
The Cleaning Lady
Pure Evil

BELGIUM
13 Commandments
Clan
Code 37: Sex Crimes
Hotel Beau Sejours
New Texas
Professor T
Public Enemy
Rough Justice
Salamander
The Score
Scratch My Back
Tabula Rasa
The Twelve

BRAZIL
Magnifica 70
Merciless
The Raid
Tainted

BULGARIA
The Devil's Throat

CHILE
Fugitives

CROATIA
Guardians of the Castle
Rest in Peace

CZECH REPUBLIC
The Invisibles
The Lens
Wasteland

DENMARK
1864

Below the Surface
Borgen
The Bridge (Co-production with Sweden
The Chestnut Man
Cry Wolf
Darkness: Those Who Kill
Deliver Us
Dicte
DNA
Greyzone (Co-production with Sweden)
Heartless
The Investigation
The Legacy
Liberty
New Nurses
Norskov
Anna Pihl
[color=green=]Prisoner[/color]
Rejseholdet
Ride Upon the Storm
Seaside Hotel
The Team
When the Dust Settles
White Sands

FINLAND
All the Sins
Bordertown
Bullets
Hooked

FRANCE
The Announcer
Beyond Appearances
Contact
Crimson Rivers
Dead Beautiful
A Deadly Union
Detective Cain
Elite Squad
Fear By the Lake
Forgotten Girls
The Hunter
Just One Look
Kabul Kitchen
Killer by the Lake
Lanester
Midnight Sun (Co-production with Sweden)
Spiral
Les Temoins
Mafiosa
Match Day
The Money Shot
No Limit
No Second Chance
The Other Mother

Paris Police 1900
The Passenger
Philharmonia
The Promise
Red Shadows
Resistance
Les Revenants/The Returned
Spin
Time is a Killer
Tony's Revenge
Torn
The Tunnel
Vanished By the Lake


GERMANY
23 Cases
Bad Banks
The Bank Hacker
Dark Rivers
Dark Woods
Deadly Money
Der Pass
Deutschland 83
Deutschland 86
Deutschland 89
Helen Dorn
Frozen Sky
Haus
Helgoland 513
Hotel Adlon
Inspector Borowski
Inspector Falke
Line of Separation
The Mind of a Murderer
Munich Games
Nick's Law
Nordic Murders
Point Blank
The Same Sky
Shades of Guilt
Souls



HUNGARY
Home Guards


ICELAND
Case
The Cliff
Cover Story
I Hunt Men
Katla
Trapped
Valhalla Murders

ISRAEL
Mama's Angel
Milk and Honey
Prisoner of War

ITALY

Blocco 181
Capo di Capi
Christian
Gomorrah
The Hunter
Ice Cold Murders: Rocco Schiavone

Inspector Ricciardi
The King
Mafia Only Kills in Summer
Maltese: The Mafia Detective
The Miracle
Romanzo Criminale
Thou Shalt Not Kill
Unwanted
Zerozerozero


MEXICO
Senorita 89
Sr. Avila

NETHERLANDS
The Adulterer
Amsterdam Vice
Anne+
Black Widow
The Blood Pact
The Body Collector
Fenix
Flight HS 13
Framed
The Prey
The Swingers

NORWAY
Acquitted
Eyewitness
Hellfjord
Lillyhammer
Mammon
Monster
Occupied
The River
State of Happiness
Valkyrie
Wisting
Witch Hunt
Young and Promising

POLAND
Angel of Death
The Border
The Defence
PAKT
The Pleasure Principle
Raven
The Teacher

RUSSIA
Gold Diggers
The Sect

SPAIN
Lifeline
Locked Up
Night and Day


SWEDEN
Alex
Angelby
Beck
Before We Die
Sebastian Bergman
Blue Eyes
Box 21
The Bridge (Co-production with Denmark)
Arne Dahl
Farang: Dead Man Running
The Fjällbacka Murders
Grayzone (Co-production with Denmark)
The Inner Circle
Jordskott
The Lawyer
Rebecka Martinsson
Midnight Sun  (Co-production with France)
Missing
Modus
Moscow Noir
Mountain Rescue
Partisan
The Sandhamn Murders
Snow Angels
Springfloden
Stockholm Requiem
Thicker Than Water
The Truth Will Out
A Very Scandi Scandal
Wallander

SWITZERLAND
10

[Trollheart]

I could of course start off with one of the better-known series - Millennium, The Bridge or maybe The Killing - but then, you know me better than that by now, don't you?


Series Title: Lykkeland
English translation: State of Happiness
Country of origin: Norway
Year(s): 2018 -
Seasons: 2; 3rd season due this year (2024)
Setting(s): Stavanger, Norway
Time period(s): 1960s-1980s
Writer(s): Mette M. Bølstad, Synnøve Hørsdal, and Siv Rajendram Eliassen
Based on: Unknown, if at all
Stars: Mads Sjøgård Pettersen, Adam Fergus, Roar Kjølv Jenssen, Laila Goody, Anastasios Soulis, Max Fowler
Main Character(s): Anna Hellevik, Christian Nyman, Jonathan Kay, Toril Torstensen
Twist Factor: 0
Conclusion index: 6
Darkness index: 3
Basic premise: After years of failure Phillips and Shell are pulling out of Stavanger when they suddenly strike oil. Now Stavanger is a major focal point for the oil companies, but it has competition from Bergen, as politics and family loyalties jockey to decide which will be the lucrative oil capital of Norway.
Copied/remade? No*
Comments: Perhaps unkindly described as "a Norwegian Dallas", State of Happiness does focus both on the oil industry and the families who make their money from it. It also however features complex human interpersonal relationships, interesting technical details about oil drilling and its inherent dangers, and the lengths companies and politicians are prepared to go to in order to land the big prize.

Why do I like this show? It's different from all the Scandi-drama and Nordic noir I've watched. There are no murders (though there are deaths), no real mysteries and for a Scandinavian drama it's not terribly dark, in literal terms. The North Sea is dark of course but most of the action takes place in boardrooms or offices, and in contrast to much Nordic/Scandi drama there's a real attempt to recreate the end of the sixties both in style and dress, and in the soundtrack, contemporary for the time, in a way I haven't really seen since maybe Life on Mars.

It also features two strong female characters, who are really more or less the main ones, even though one (Toril) is originally depicted as headstrong and naive. The other is clever, but stuck in a male-dominated world and business in which she can run rings around her male counterparts if they would only recognise her worth, but this is 1969 after all. So in some critical ways, State of Happiness isn't just the story of the discovery of oil in Norway, it's also a depiction of the struggle of women to be taken seriously and make their mark on society, industry, politics and indeed history, to show the men they can be just as clever, double-dealing and ruthless as them.
This was also the first (though not only) Scandi drama I watched where part of the dialogue was in English; that was a little jarring at first, but necessary within the plot (why would American oilmen speak Norwegian when alone?) and it made it somehow more believable as a story. I also think it's one of the few Scandi dramas that involves Americans, though I could be wrong there; but mostly in these it's countrymen only. In some you will get Danes working with Swedes or Finns and so on, but they normally don't go outside Scandinavia.

Articles: Geek Nation

Euro TV

Overall rating: 9/10

Notes: Twist Factor speaks for itself. How much of a twist, surprise or shock is in the series? Does it change tack suddenly? Can you guess how it will end, or is it a total curve ball? Ranges from lowest 0 (no twist factor at all) to 10 (WTF?!!)

Conclusion index determines how well, or badly the series - NOT the season - ends. This is a little more complicated.

1 - 2 Terrible ending. Either totally predictable or very unsatisfying. May leave many loose ends untied, or end in a completely ridiculous and unacceptable fashion.

3 - 5 Decent ending, but nothing special. All loose ends tied up. Could have ended better but not too bad really.

6 - 8 A satisfying ending with all loose ends tied up, though perhaps somewhat as expected.

9 - 10 Great ending. Could not have predicted this.

Darkness index: Um, how dark is it? Not literally: how many murders, rapes, conflicts, setbacks, revelations, secrets are in it? Kind of like the Twist Index but a bit deeper. As I pointed out in the introduction, few of these shows are without their darkness, but some are obviously darker than others. Goes on a sliding scale, where 0 is no darkness at all (very rare) and 10 is may make you want to hang yourself in despair.



* As far as I am aware