Fortitude: Sky Atlantic's big-budget semi-Scandi murder-mystery drama (aka "Fjordchurch")

Did anyone else watch this last night? A slow burn, but intriguing. It's airing on something called the 'Pivot' network in the U.S.
Little bits of The Returned, The Killing, maybe some Twin Peaks...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqpH9NmmQPE

ooh Christopher Eccleston, I'll watch anything with him in. One of Britain's finest actors.

o yea I was planning to check this out, I do somehow get Pivot

(xp) friend of mine considers Christopher Eccleston one of Britain's worst actors, loathes him, don't know why exactly.

... I mention because we were talking about him last night.

Wouldn't bank on too much Ecclestone involvement whichever way you feel about him.

I watched the first episode and am suitably intrigued.

Despite the fact they essentially spent millions creating the perfect fusion of previously successful dramas - I can't deny that this was good. Looks great - lots of threads to it - good acting.

Ben Frost did the music for this thing apparently

Yeah for the first 20mins or so I thought it was going to be too tickboxy to bother with but then it really lifted off. I like how Sophie Grabol's character is the complete opposite of her character in The Killing. Sleepwalking child was just weird.

the array of accents kind of annoys me. like i don't really care about how realistic it is and i don't care too much about them fabricating the perfect location to do the tv show that will tick the right boxes, but it is a bit convenient how this location is a smorgasbord of different accents. also, despite the fact that stanley tucci was great - talk about shoehorning a guy in with a terrible storyline.

i don't know if any other show besides that one with steven van zandt have featured a nordic town hiring a famous american actor fbi agent to solve a crime, but it's pretty transparent and dumb.

dunno whether to be excited or concerned about the slight vibe of lost about this. and i don't mean just cos of the polar bears.

They have done enough advertising EVERYWHERE in the UK for dis.

The array of accents more or less makes sense for a place that's basically a scientific research facility in the middle of the Arctic, although there would probably be more Scandinavians and fewer Brits.

The American detective is clearly as dodgy as hell but the scenes where someone incredulously asked why London were sending an American investigator were kind of annoying if not part of the plot.

As viewers I think we're clearly all so traumatised by the end of Lost that we get the fear at the start of any even slightly weird new TV series. I swear people would be saying the same thing about Wolf Hall if we didn't already know what was going to happen.

it would only take a few seconds of thinking about lost to feel very angry.

I love the array of accents!

Watched the first episode last night. Loved the look and feel of it but was a bit confused by all the different threads. Kept turning to my wife and saying "Have we seen him before?" Seemed too much going on. But I'll probably stick with it.

I find that in a lot of new dramas with big ensemble casts, but especially when half the characters have a beard and a wearing a big hat.

i'm still just about on board with this but it needs to get a lot better than the second episode. the mysteries intrigue me but i don't actually care about any of the characters yet or look forward to spending screen time with them

i like the fact they appear to be introducing a feeder.

just gonna reiterate the feeder storyline in this got a stronger reaction of disgust from me than many more graphic or violent scenes

think it's ticking over in a fairly good way - tho i prob wouldn't be watching if we weren't in this hellish tv serial mid-season no breaking bad drought.

the odd terrible scene here and there - eg the british scientist (a fairly poor bbc3 type character) and his stupid ribs. "they remind me too much of a chest cavity".

How is this now?

I think p good, it's kind of silly but compelling. It really is a patchwork quilt of so many other shows.

I've not seen last night's episode but last week's was one of the most disgusting scenes I've ever seen on TV - had to switch it off. That's prob the show's biggest achievement and it's a bit cheap.

sold

file with walking dead for "why am i still watching this" combined with "and yet"

You talking about the chest ripping open bit or something else?

that bit, yeah. maybe it's just me, i'm not generally squeamish, i've watched lots of things that are apparently shocking, but i honestly just found that disgusting.

felt like they prob hadn't earned it either, was maybe a bit cynical.

It's a shame because this show is so nearly there - beautifully shot, well-acted, genuinely sinister in places, but the characters are mostly underwritten. Plus it's so obvious what's going on that the sense of mystery just isn't there.

I actually thought the feeder guy buying a funnel so he could pour melted ice-cream down his ill girlfriend's throat was more disgusting than any of the actual dismemberment fwiw.

all of the feeder stuff was disgusting from the start. the way they handled that storyline, until monsterism, is prob the best thing in the show.

it's still decent but it hasn't gotten over sky1's curse - copying other shows, ticking all boxes, feeling that it was made by committee.

this actually stuck the landing decently, perhaps surprisingly...though the penultimate episode felt more dramatic as befitting a finale, the last episode felt like tidying up with a random extra ill person stuck in for drama. a few unexplained loose ends and i'm really not interested in a second series but that was a satisfying ride overall.

yeah i actually think this was p good overall - it's far from perfect but it had some moments of brilliance - the music is incredible and some of the shooting is so lavish. that entire rape scene was harrowing to watch but the pace of it and the character of the storytelling was immaculate.

Yeah I was losing interest midway through but this really brought it together well at the end. Terrifying prehistoric insects are a better conceit than whatever supernatural shit I'd initially feared they'd come up with, and actually I'm actually quite stoked at the prospect of an uncontrollable plague in S2. I even started to feel for the annoying drama school scientists by the end.

Felt weird to watch an ensemble TV show that didn't even nominally have a lead, every time you thought someone was going to fill that role they killed them off.

You'd have thought that, given it's an isolated community in the snow surrounded by polar bears and troubled by unexplained murderers, someone would have thought to hire a second doctor as quickly as possible.

Also I have been caning Ben Frost's Aurora album from last year, as a direct result of watching this, so that's a tick in its favour as well.

I felt the ending was disappointing actually, a lot what were obviously intended to be big emotional payoffs (eg Dan shooting Elena) felt glib and unearned. Still hadn't really forgiven them for disposing of Morton in such and offhand way.

Still an enjoyable series, loved the setting and atmosphere, well acted and paced for the most part. I'll watch a bit of s2 at least out of interest.

actually thought the feeder guy buying a funnel so he could pour melted ice-cream down his ill girlfriend's throat was more disgusting than any of the actual dismemberment fwiw.

― Matt DC

Feeder guy may be the best surviving character.

i never understood why people had so much affection for morton, one of the less compelling characters imo

Dry outsider's perspective always attractive.

Also Tucci is an excellent actor imo.

yeah i like tucci

Did anyone watch series 2?

I did.
It gets weirder, and not necessarily better. Lots of minor threads from the first series are left unresolved.

There is a shaman. And castration. And more reindeer juice.

Apparently this is on Amazon Prime in the US. I'm mildly intrigued.

did quite enjoy first season. enjoyed the 2nd season too but it's much harder to suspend disbelief as the series draws to a close.

First season overall vibe reminded me of X-files cold opens stretched out to ten episodes, sans Scullder. My frustrations w/ the show came from the fact that at every single damn opportunity in which it could conceivably have gone dark/violent/gory/sucker-punchy it did so, to the point where it lost any shock factor. Its scares and gross-outs were, by the end, as predictably gratuitous as Dennis Franz's pebbly buttocks in late-season NYPD Blue

did you watch the 2nd season? penultimate ep really has the top gross out scene.

It's in the queue. I like so many of the actors. It's kind of like Masterpiece Theatre: Garbage Pail Kids

There was a second season of this?

Yes and it sucked.

Not that surprised. The first season had sucky elements.

There seems to be a third season coming up (in the UK).

Can't actually remember how the second season finished.

Was season 2 a stealth scifi one like the first series? I liked that.