"The safest place on Earth" (or not, as it soon transpires).
The season one of this Sky Atlantic series is currently aired here, we are five episodes into the story. I have a soft spot for suspense that uses the nordic winter as both a setting and an element to sustain a chilling tableau of events and characters (think of "Let The Right One In"). I love "Fortitude" for that. Maybe just because I know a little about winters, frostbites and polar nights...
The series has been called "The Northern Twin Peaks". All nonsense: there is none of that wilfully nightmarish quality in "Fortitude". Everyone is fully, if reluctantly, awake - although there are moments when I wonder how there can be characters who don't know each other in such a small community.
As almost always in a suspense story, a good number of the characters have unspoken secrets, something they try to avoid telling, and a good deal of the villagers/citizens are suspect and unsavoury or they behave in unnerving, erratic ways. Even when they probably have nothing to do with the crimes being investigated.
In a certain fashion the story moves like a western: The outsider, a criminal investigator called Morton, arrives in a small town, whose mayor also doubles as the head of police, and challenges the local sheriff. Morton also has a coolly no-nonsense personality and professional gravitas he uses to cut through the maze of unrevealed secrets and anchor down the various subplots.
I just might get the DVD box set when it will be released.
About the running comic relief about lutfisk: as one of the characters quips, "the truth about lutfisk is it should never be eaten". True. It is vile stuff.