mjmacky
07-19-2012, 12:05 AM
I started watching a few episodes over the course of today, and so far I'm quite enjoying it. It stars some mandolin player from the E Street Band as a mafia snitch who wants to live out his witness protection days in a former Olympic hosting city in Norway.
He immediately shoots for high profile. The show isn't exactly brilliant as it tends to adopt the most obvious comedic response to every happenstance, usually playing up some stereotype (most heavily, the socially conservative mafia goon). That being said, I'm unable to help myself from enjoying it. It's comical but not outright silly (I feel like I'm comparing it to The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret, another American in Europe, fish out of water comedy). I'm thinking about including a clip, but I don't feel like making one or finding one.
The other thing is the language, it is half English and half Norwegian, but not in a code switching manner. The main character seems to generally understand the language but tends to exclusively speak English. The Nords seem to only use English to punctuate their statements directed towards him, and that was the only grounded feeling aspect of the show for me.
This leads me to my final point. Let's say that by some off chance you want to chance a viewing. You will need English subtitles (if you're an English speaker). The show was originally made for a Norwegian audience, so the subtitles you find tend to be in Norwegian in the pirated releases. I bring that up because netflix picked up the sole distribution rights for this show in the territories in which it operates. That's great news if you have netflix, but I don't know what to tell you if you don't. I'm watching on netflix and they have the forced subtitle situation working, I can't say the same for other releases.
He immediately shoots for high profile. The show isn't exactly brilliant as it tends to adopt the most obvious comedic response to every happenstance, usually playing up some stereotype (most heavily, the socially conservative mafia goon). That being said, I'm unable to help myself from enjoying it. It's comical but not outright silly (I feel like I'm comparing it to The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret, another American in Europe, fish out of water comedy). I'm thinking about including a clip, but I don't feel like making one or finding one.
The other thing is the language, it is half English and half Norwegian, but not in a code switching manner. The main character seems to generally understand the language but tends to exclusively speak English. The Nords seem to only use English to punctuate their statements directed towards him, and that was the only grounded feeling aspect of the show for me.
This leads me to my final point. Let's say that by some off chance you want to chance a viewing. You will need English subtitles (if you're an English speaker). The show was originally made for a Norwegian audience, so the subtitles you find tend to be in Norwegian in the pirated releases. I bring that up because netflix picked up the sole distribution rights for this show in the territories in which it operates. That's great news if you have netflix, but I don't know what to tell you if you don't. I'm watching on netflix and they have the forced subtitle situation working, I can't say the same for other releases.