Post mortem: Personne ne meurt à Skarnes

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.