Nobel

When I finished the last episode of Nobel, I was ready to give it a solid four stars. The kind of four stars that feels so right, so well-deserved, you almost don’t need to second-guess it. But then I asked myself, why not five? And honestly, I couldn’t come up with a single reason not to. Nobel is a tight, eight-episode series with a clear beginning and end. It offers a fascinating dive into the world of espionage, covert operations, and Norwegian foreign policy. It’s not over-the-top like many American productions; instead, it keeps things grounded with two parallel storylines. One follows a military mission in Afghanistan, and the other tracks the main character’s return home to Oslo and his family. The acting is phenomenal, with standout performances from Tuva Novotny, Aksel Hennie, and Anders Danielsen Lie, forming one of the best trios I’ve seen in a long time. Sure, the marital conflict toward the end felt a bit off, but the epic finale made up for it, packing an emotional punch that left testosterone practically flying off the screen. In the end, Nobel is an incredible experience. Another win for Scandinavian TV, with a touch of Czech support (Oslo's government interiors were filmed in the Czech Republic). A top-notch series I highly recommend. (03/11/2020)

Take "Postbrody's" Homeland series, adapt them in the spirit of John le Carré's newer novels and shoot it as a slow reserved documentary in the style of Tobias Lindholm. This is the impression this series would like to make and surprisingly, it really works to a large extent. It addresses current issues (oil, Chinese investment business, the Middle East conflict, a pragmatic approach to the Taliban's role and traumatized soldiers during and after the mission, political plots, playing with fire and much more), but not black and white or cheap (not surprisingly, this is completely the same team that was behind The Saboteurs). Which will please you even more because at the core it is still primarily a thrilling thriller, which could take even a lot less complex breeding ground and focus on authenticity. However, there´s one problem arising from this, it´s when here and there something is captured in a non-complex way (or it resorts to genre cliché), then it´s even much more obvious. Undoubtedly, it has more than just one issue, it could be told in fewer episodes (especially it could be edited at first, it really starts only from the third episode on) and some story lines could be omitted or, on the contrary, more space should be devoted to them. But still, it's all the acting is brilliant and it is sometimes damn exciting. The risky step with including current topics has paid off, they are not funny, and moreover it is rather nice and can do without strong words and gestures, which is the result of a non dull military-political drama-thriller, which relies as much on the main characters as on its course. PS: It was also filmed in the Czech Republic, so domestic locations here pretend to be Norwegian; especially in the first episode, the Prague Congress Centre disguised as the opera house and the ministry in Oslo make Czech viewers slightly smile. (26/01/2017)