On its launch in January 2015 you couldn’t move without
seeing a billboard for Fortitude.
Huge out-of-home formats in train stations and by roadsides told everyone to
stop what they were doing and to watch this massive show immediately. There
was a stellar cast. Not just big names, but credible character actors who
are in those shows and films that you like, and who did ever such a good
performance in that thing where maybe they got some award nominations as well,
probably. Plus, there was snow in the background. A show in the
snow seemed like something a bit different, so what wasn’t to love?
Around the same time, I was lucky enough to meet the man at Sky who had commissioned Fortitude. As
part of my real job, I was at their HQ in Osterley (not worth the Tube journey
in itself) for an immersion day and we were granted an audience with this very
nice chap (which was worth the Tube journey). Commissioners are often the
most interesting people you can meet in media. They have to predict and
then cater to the desires of audiences, both telling us what we should want to
watch and responding to what we actually want to watch. For a drama like
Fortitude, the gestation period can last years, but I remember being told that
the script was like nothing he had seen before and like nothing on TV at the
time, so he gave it the green light.
Now we are two series into Fortitude and, indeed, it is like
nothing I have ever seen before. In fact, after sitting through many
hours of it, I still have no idea what it is like or, really, what it’s about
either. Is it science fiction or realistic? Is it a murder mystery
or is it a drama? Is it a crime thriller or arthouse foreign
nonsense? Luckily, it’s all of these things, and most likely a few others
as well.
I spent the first series imagining that Fortitude was an
island near the Arctic, maybe like Svalbard. With its governor and
everyone speaking English, I thought it might be a British or US
territory. I think now it’s actually near Norway’s border with Russia,
but it doesn’t really matter. It’s snowy AF and the best thing about its
place name is hearing all the cast pronouncing it in their wonderfully
different accents. Not the Americans or the Brits, but the various
Scandinavians. I’ve already talked of my love of a good Nordic accent in Vikings,
but they don’t get to singsong For-ti-tude over and over again till it sounds
ridiculously entertaining.
That aside, there are things about the show that don’t quite
work. Given the environment, action scenes do tend to end with people
running in the snow. But people can’t run very fast in snow.
Especially if they are wrapped up in big coats. And the big coats make
the characters hard to recognise. Therefore, I find it hard to be excited
by the snow chases, but it doesn’t matter, as I don’t know who the people are
anyway. The cast is pretty big – it’s a whole town. If you don’t
cotton on to names quickly, or remember everything you’ve seen, then abandon
hope now. Quite a few of them die, so series two regenerates with new
people who you’ve never heard of and whose origins aren’t really
explained. The mysteries are also complex, mostly rooting back to a
decomposing mammoth carcass in the permafrost. And, you know,
wasps. If advanced biology, zoology and archaeology aren’t your idea of
entertainment then you should probably be keeping up with a Kardashian
instead. However, if the gore of shows like Fear
The Walking Dead isn’t enough, then Fortitude has many gruesome treats for
you. It’s the first show where I’ve had to mute the sound to spare myself
the grotesque audio of some unnecessary surgery.
But yes, get drawn in by the stellar cast (until their
characters die), enjoy the breath-taking snowscapes (even though they tone down
any action chases as people are worried about slipping over) and stay for the
twists and turns (because it doesn’t really matter if you have no idea what’s
going on). At no point will you be more entertained than when you hear a
Scandinavian cry out the place name For-ti-tude…
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