Kylmä muuri

Finnish television has some tradition of small, matter-of-fact dramas dealing with political decisions and processes during the key moments of the nation's history. Kylmä muuri interestingly uses the same quasi-documentary approach on a purely science-fictional storyline. With global warming running out of control in near future, the United States and Russia secretly plan to divert the Gulf Stream with nuclear detonations in order to cool the Northern Hemisphere. The central idea is improbable, but like most science-fiction future visions, it serves as a nightmare scenario and springboard for discussion on the morality of today's actions.

The problem is that the narrative setting – the Finnish government and academia – restricts the dramatic potential of the work. The first part has some tension, as Hämäläinen's character probes for the truth behind the superpowers' naval preparations. The second part is simply a massive info-dump from a stereotypically geeky scientist, which works thanks to the sympathetically down-to-earth performance from the always reliable Peltola. The rest is helpless moral pondering about issues over which the characters have no real control. This is of course something that small nations feel, when forced to adjust to the world-changing or world-smashing whims and ambitions of "sovereign powers". Finland's own precarious balancing act on the fault line of power blocks during the Cold War is certainly reflected in the play, including its multi-connotative title (literally "a Cold Wall"). So as a drama it is something of a missed opportunity, but as a thought experiment in a genre as rare as poultry's dentures in Finnish television, it is most welcome.

The same team later also tackled the subject of human cloning with the similar production Klooni, but there the leadenly turgid dialogue, overbearing moralising and the whole clichéd artificiality of the setting squeezed the life out of the piece.