Trom-six episodes of wasted time
What seemed to be an interesting idea to put a nordic crime story on a remote Atlantic island nation, after the first half of the first episode really never caught my interest.
First: accolades and some handclaps to those who came up with the idea to make a crime story on the island nation of Faroe Islands. Unfortunately that is the only good thing about this poor attempt to make interesting TV. The end result just isn’t good enough to spent time watching.
One thing that is interesting, and that I actually liked was the fact that the cast woke danish AND Faroese. Since Faroe Islands has two official languages and is a partially autonomy part of Denmark with partial self-governance. In From this is however not addressed, and people fly from and to Denmark and does not seem to have any self- governance except for the language on their name tags on the police uniforms. Pity, that could have given the series a more interesting perspective and depth.
Spoiler alert: don’t read on if you really feel the need to spend six episodes, nearly five and a half hours of your life, throwing time away-time you could have used for something less frustrating.
So what happens? To begin with, it was rather obvious what would happen to the environmentally engaged girl in the first episode. A conflict with a nasty local industrial mogul had — obvious — consequenses.
The very well known International journalist Hannis Mattisson has been contacted by her since she has info on possible environmental crimes on the island where she lives. So he comes to the island to meet her, but of course she is already dead. And of course he turns out to be her unknown father. Which in it self could be an interesting thread to spin from, but NOOO. Not in Trom.
The local Danish police captain Karla Mohr, played by Maria Rich, that runs the police investigation has two facial expressions: sad and more sad. No sorry, that was unfair. She has a third: confused. Needless to say she also interferes with the investigation in a negative way.
So, there you have all the stereotypes stapled inside the package of the first episode. The remaining five I watched to see if it would eventually lift to be bearable. It didn’t. Silly me.
As it turned out the local evil mogul had nothing to do with the murder. Or well — he did, “by proxy”. And the supposed twist on the identity of the murderer was not as a big surprise to us watchers as the director might had hoped. We understood a few episodes earlier when the police inspector tampered with the evidence, and also when she said the wrong name in connection to a search warrant.
Not even the attempt to end the series with a cliffhanger that hopefully would want people to watch an eventual second season made me interested in watching it if there ever will be one. It was just clumsy and stupid and laughable. It was more “Oh my God, how did they think?” Than “Oh, that was really something that makes me stay awake at nights until they release season two”.
The main character Hannis Martinsson is played by the Danish actor Ulrich Thomsen, and he proves that he **CAN** act. The scenes where is taking part are at least credible. He does what he can do with a script and a plot that is destined to sink.
And the local Faroese actors aren’t bad, they just don’t get the space they ought to have. The series would not have lost anything by having a Faroese police chief instead of a Danish, since the political connection between the two nations isn’t explained anyway.
Online reviews are to be honest divided. Some are positive and lift the fact that it is filmed in Faroe Islands and what a stunning nature there is on that island nation. And yes, but that isn’t enough in my humble point of view.
If you want stunning nature sceneries combined with a good script, watch the British TV-series Shetland. Or Carnival from Canada. Or any of the Icelandic crime stories. Or even the Swedish Rebecca Martinsson. Our just go out into the nearest forest and look at a tree for 45 minutes.
I give From 1 out of 5 stars.
(Photo by Eric Welch on Unsplash)