Post Mortem: No One Dies in Skarnes

This dry slice of Norweigan urban horror took me completely by surprise and I rather got on with it. Assuming it at first to be a standard Scandi-noir it takes a fantastic turn and gets seriously dark, ludicrously tense and utterly engaging. It does move rather glacially at times and feels rather open ended but I was a huge fan of the character stuff - the determined police chief, the hapless but glorious Odd and the sinister doctor. Hopefully this gets a little more, but certainly worth a look if you've passed it by or want to have a little bloody taster of Norwegian TV.

This is a very competent collection of eight episodes relating the story of a young adult female whose untimely death at the hands of an as-yet-unknown assailant proves to be anything but usual. Subplot lines were evenly distributed among secondary and tertiary characters. Some slapstick comedy is sprinkled in to liven the mood.

I genuinely expected for the series to go stale after only the first two or three episodes; after all, there's only so much that can be done with the zombie theme without hordes of the undead consuming fleeing pockets of the human population. If it's not all action than it had better be one part action-drama, two-parts special effects! This novel combination works too, but it calls for a bit more time investment. Trust me, the payoff is well worth the wait. And despite the thriller branding, it's basically a mystery comedy-drama.

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.

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 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.