Fortitude, Sky Atlantic, 9pm
After last week's feature length opening episode, it was hard not to come to two very clear conclusions about Sky Atlantic's all-star, big budget, Scandi-style crime noir. First, that it's actually quite bad. Second, that it's aptly named: fortitude is exactly the quality that's most going to be needed by anyone planning to sit through the entire 12 part series.
And what is Fortitude exactly? Well, it's a place, but it might also be an island, and it's located in a region that also has polar bears. This might be Norway - we glimpsed a Norwegian flag in the first episode one and the town's Northern Irish "sheriff" (Game Of Thrones star Richard Dormer) is referred to as being Norwegian in one scene. Or it might be somewhere else entirely. Somewhere that has a cornucopia of British regional accents and where a Scotland Yard detective who's actually an American can be flown in to investigate the murder which kicked things off last week.
As for the drama itself, it's Twin Peaks in fur-lined parkas, which is to say it's Fargo-meets-Northern Exposure-meets-Insomnia (the original, not the American remake). Or at least it's trying to be those things. Sadly it lacks the verve, the Lynchian vision, the Angelo Badalamenti score and Frances McDormand, so its weirdness ends up looking mannered and clunky. Not as clunky as the dialogue, though, the clunkiest example of which came when writer-creator Simon Donald shoehorned in a line explaining why the London detective (Stanley Tucci) was talking like an American. He used to work for the FBI, you see. Yeah, that works.
And yet, there is something oddly watchable about Fortitude. Mostly it's Tucci as suave, dogged investigator Eugene Morton, who pads about in the snow dressed like George Smiley on his way home from the Circus and turns up uninvited to post mortems. Dodgy accent aside, Dormer's pretty good too as police chief Dan Anderssen and let's not forget everybody's favourite Danish knitwear model Sofie Grabol, who plays Fortitude's double-dealing governor Hildur Odegard. Tonight, Morton meets more colourful characters, and Anderssen runs down missing miner Jason Donnelly (Aaron McCusker) who may or may not have something to do with the murder but who is definitely climbing under the sheets with comely scientist Natalie Yelburton (Sienna Guillory). In case you've forgotten, she's the one who had the gratuitous full-frontal nude scene last week.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article